Light Collapse - Karabash [Muzikaal Kabaal - 2012]Light Collapse is one of the three or four projects of Russian industrial/noise/ambient artist’s Vitaly Maklakov. “Karabash” is a CDR that offers up one subtly shifting track of fairly dense ‘n’ brutal walled noise. The Light Collapse project has been active since 2005 and has put out nearing thirty releases, which have taken in splits with the likes of Vomir & Clive Henry. I’m ashamed to say this is my first taster of this projects work, but from what I can gather it’s sound has always been in the textured noise, radio static, HNW bracket. This CDR is themed/dedicated to what is said to be one of the most polluted city in the world Karabash. The town of Karabash, is in the Russian province of Chelyabinsk, 870 miles from Moscow. A copper smelting plant was built in the town a 100 or so years back, and its toxic waste has created extremely large amounts of pollution and serious health problems for the inhabitants of the town, & it’s surrounding areas. The self titled track on offer here comes in at just over the hour mark, and it finds Maklakov building a slowing shifting flow of dense walled noise that takes in a mixture of: rumbling/ juddering low-end often crusty noise, jittering mid-ranged noise, subtle traces of cluttering ‘n’ battering noise matter, and buzzing static ribbed noise- that’s often buried with-in the wall’s make-up. Maklakov keeps the ‘wall’ slowly morphing & shifting through most of the tracks running time, but there are no huge textural shifts here- with the track often feeling like the audio equivalent of watching a slowing running river that’s afloat with all manner of debris & toxic decay, which I guess is very fitting for the release/tracks theme. The ‘wall’ also seems to get more muffled/ hazed/ enclosing the longer if goes on, which I guess could suggest ones body getting slow more infected/ corrupted by copper waste
All told this is an effective & engrossing piece of wall-making that fits very well with it’s theme of pollution. I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for both The Light Collapse & Vitaly Maklakov work in future. Roger Batty
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