Horrible Mess - Concrete and Clay [Altar Of Waste - 2013]Concrete and Clay offers up five ‘walls’ worth of moody & creative textured noise, which falls some where between HNW & ANW. As the CDR titles suggest there’s often a very earthy & layered feel to many of the tracks presented here. Often the ‘walls’ here bring to mind images of vast yet stark ‘n’ bleak building sites busy with odd sounds, strange subterranean borrowing’s ‘n’ tunnelling’s, or weird muddy twisting of massive semi aquatic beasts. Yet for all it’s earthy, wet, and organic feel, there is often an undertone of eerier alien-ness present, which takes this release beyond just purely organic focused sound texturing. Horrible Mess is a Canadian based HNW/Harsh noise project, it's been active since 2011 & put out around twenty or so releases- these take in split tapes, compilation appearances, and a few stand alone tape releases. I was very much taken by this projects 2013 release The Well(on Breaching Static), so much so that I made it my top album for the year in 2013- so in my mind Concrete and Clay had a lot to live up to. I’ll have to admit my initial plays through this release did leave me a little underwhelmed & disappointed, sure it was clear that Horrible Mess was once again using his ability for great descriptive, creative & atmospheric noise textures- but on an emotional/ gut level I felt it somewhat lacking compared with a release like The Well. So, like with any release that I respected, but doesn’t initially grab me, I gave it time and then distant- i.e. I played it through a few more times, then waited a few months before coming back to it. After coming back to it again I certainly appreciated & got more of what Horrible Mess was trying to do here- you see the album is built around five untitled tracks all, it opens & closes with two shorter (just over two minute) tracks, the three tracks in-between last for the longer running length of eleven to thirteen mintues a piece. The opening track works as a more simplistic textural gateway into the rest of the tracks, while the last track sort of smothers you in this dank, earthy & murky textural psychedelics. Each of the longer central three tracks really tell their own individual subtle shifting textural story, that is often quite layered & detailed in it’s feel. The whole thing is certainly very cleverly conceived, constructed & put together, and clearly a lot of time/effort has been put into this work, but I’m still a little unsure about the whole thing, & I’ve still not completely connected & engaged to the release Maybe it’s a matter of more time & distant ( hell there are some albums that have taken years for me to fully get), or maybe it’s simply that this isn’t as fulfilling or rewarding as The Well- at this stage I’m still very much undecided, but don’t let my doubt put you off!- if you enjoy creative & descriptive textured noise that flits between HNW & ANW this really is something you must check out so you can make your own mind up.    Roger Batty
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