Fouke - Sulphur River [Room 2A - 2014]Of all the many projects of respected & influential Texas Noise maker Richard Ramirez (according to discog’s 60 +) I’d say Fouke stands as one of my favourite- due to it’s great mix of rewarding wall craft & atmosphere all themed around the various Big Foot legends/ sightings/ films. so I was very excited when I saw he had put out this three CDR set of new material- and I’m happy to report it’s up to the quality of the projects past releases. The Fouke project has been active since 2009, and so far put around 20 release- taking in CDR releases, multi tape box sets, tapes & splits. It takes its name from the small US town of Fouke which is located on the Arkansas/Texas Border. The town is most known for sightings of it's Bigfoot like monster which was made famous by the 1970’s film Legend of 'Boggy Creek'. This three disc set takes its name from the 175-mile-long (282 km) river that runs it's way through northeast Texas- the river has a long history of sightings Bigfoot. I’m reviewing a digital version of this release, but seemingly the physical version( of just 15 copies) comes in a large envelope packaging that takes in pictures related to a case from the Sulphur River area- taking in buildings, family photos, and big foot pictures. Each disc offers up a single track, and these run between around the thirty minute to near fifty five minute mark. So first up we have “Part I”, and this opens with a brief sample of a man talking about his sighting of a Bigfoot, and with-in a minute or so we are into the noise. This ‘wall’ is built around a set of muffled & slightly hazed trampling ‘n’ thick bounding like textures- these are under fed by this very distant & blunt drone wondering. All the textures sit a similar low-to-mid tonal range, and the whole thing locks down into a fairly firm setting through-out. The ‘wall’ very much summons up images of a group of big foot slowly lumbing their way through the forest on mass, or surrounding & closing in on a campers tent late at night. With this track Ramirez’s creates a great oppressive, muddy, and airless wall, which is both densely chilling & oddly appealing as it sucks you deeper & deeper into its thick & suffocation maelstrom of impenetrable sound. Moving onto disc two, and we have the track "Part Two"- this is the shortlists track of the set at just over the thirty minute mark. The whole thing opens with a mix of raw low-to-mid range dragging, cable swirls, and panicked screams- these mix together human female & huge animal like calls. At around the third minute we move into a slightly more even textural map, and this is made of slowly shifting & muffled layers of amp up dragging, rumbling, coarse snapping, and scathing. The whole wall brings to mind a human victim been attacked over & over by the big foot, as it gets dragged deeper & deeper into the tight dense forest. Though the ‘walls’ layers are fairly active in their movement, the textures here never depart too far from a fixed set of tones- all told it’s another very seared yet atmosphere perfect slice of ‘wall-making’ So lastly we have disc three, and the track "Part Three". This track comes in around the fifty three minute mark, and the ‘wall’ is a built around an extreme taut & airless mix of several layers of noise tones- we have a deep & rapid stabbing low end, a chopping/juddering semi muffled mid range, and a few thinner uniformed chopping semi muffled/dragged static tones. The whole thing creates this great, suffocating, inescapable, yet appealing ‘wall’- it feels like your been rapid encased deeper & deeper in a thick mat of weaved vines, brunches, and rope like vegetation- as if the Bigfoot is wrapping you up for a later dinner. So in conclusion Sulphur River is another highly worthy, masterfully created, and atmospheric slices of bigfoot themed wall craft from Mr Ramirez- as of writing you can still seemingly get copies of this direct, so head over to here Roger Batty
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