Top Bar
Musique Machine Logo Home ButtonReviews ButtonArticles ButtonBand Specials ButtonAbout Us Button
SearchGo Down
Search for  
With search mode in section(s)
And sort the results by
show articles written by  
 Review archive:  # a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

The Ebony Tower / Blood Eagle - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle [Knife With A Smile - 2015]

This split 62 cassette tape offers up two side long slices of dense & unrelenting walled noise that is themed around Haruki Murakami’s  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle- a series of three novels that follow  the adventures of one Toru Okada who loses his job, cat & wife, then goes on a often surreal journey to find his wife( and cat) meeting along the way a series of bizarre characters.

The split brings together two US walled noise acts- we have The Ebony Tower, which is the project of Greeley Colorado based Mitchell Rotunno- over the last year or so the project has rightly received praise for it’s literature influenced HNW that is both dense yet often detailed.  And Blood Eagle – which is one of the newer projects of long term wall noise scene-ster Philadelphia based Paul Dever(Griz+zlor, Cursed Aether, Dhusk).


Up first on side A we have The Ebony Tower track & this is entitled “ May Kasahara”. The track opens with a mix of the following: a stretched-out buffeting billowing, a galloping judder, and muffled aquatic rumble. As the track progresses on we get very subtle adjustments in the layers & one off sonic events occurring( for example around the five & half minute mark with get this sudden rising texture that sounds like it's sampled from a sci-fi film). Like most of this project work the track is very, very dense in it’s over all feel, with a general feel of textural overload- but it’s the very subtle & often micro detail shifts that make the whole thing rewarding. I won’t go into detail each & every shift here, as it’s best to see what you can pick-up your self- but this is certainly another eventful & rewarding track from the project.

Flipping over to side B we have the Blood Eagle track, and this entitled “Chapter 13: Mongolian Skinner”. And this ‘wall’ is built around a deep continual rumbling ‘n’ crumble pattern, which has  these sways of crumbling static judders gathering around it.  The central texture is pleasing crushing in it’s set pattern, with sub judders nicely moving through a fairly narrow set of ebbs & shifts. The whole thing rather brought to my mind slowed footage of a snow storm, as it slowly gathers around buildings & the landscape.  As the track progresses the textures seem to nicely blur & meld together slightly, and there’s also a feel that the whole thing is slowing down- but both of these could just be a trick of the ‘wall’.


All told this is a worthy split with both projects offering up a appealing bits of dense wall craft- from The Ebony Tower it’s  a thick yet layer detail shifting track, and Blood Eagle  presents the listener with a crushing yet entrancing slice of dense crumble based wall-making.

Rating: 3 out of 5Rating: 3 out of 5Rating: 3 out of 5Rating: 3 out of 5Rating: 3 out of 5

Roger Batty
Latest Reviews

The Ebony Tower / Blood Eagle -...
This split 62 cassette tape offers up two side long slices of dense & unrelenting walled noise that is themed around Haruki Murakami’s  The Wind-Up ...
290324   Stuart Argabright & AfterAfte...
290324   Piranha - Piranha(DVD)
280324   Typhoon Club - Typhoon Club(B...
270324   Jerzy Skolimowski Collection ...
260324   Latex Choker - Sealed
260324   Occlusion - 59: No Input Wall
260324   Nihil Impvlse - Anabasis
260324   Marta Forsberg - Sjunger För...
260324   The New Boy - The New Boy( Th...
250324   The Stargazer’s Assistant - ...
Latest Articles

The Music of Clay Ruby & Burial H...
Over the last couple of decades Wisconsin native, Clay Ruby has been creating some of the world’s finest dark electronic music under the Burial Hex mon...
280324   The Music of Clay Ruby & Buri...
290224   Sutcliffe No More - Normal Ev...
100124   Occlusion - The Operation Is...
181223   Best Of 2023 - Music, Sound &...
051223   Powerhouse Films - Of Magic, ...
181023   IO - Of Sound, Of Art, Of Exp...
210923   Lucky Cerruti - Of Not so Fri...
290823   The Residents - The Trouble W...
110723   Yotzeret Sheydim Interview - ...
250523   TenHornedBeast - Into The Dee...
Go Up
(c) Musique Machine 2001 -2023. Twenty two years of true independence!! Mail Us at questions=at=musiquemachine=dot=comBottom