Die Reitenden Leichen - Supreme Nudity [Victimology Records - 2013]“Supreme Nudity” is a CDR release that offers up three 15 minute plus slices of rewarding & darkly imaginative walled noise from this German project. Die Reitenden Leichen has been in existence since 2009, and behind the project is one Matt Nihil- who also runs HNW/noise label Monolithische Aktion, and is in numerous other noise projects such as MX Nihil, The 120 Days, etc. The CDR comes in a long ziplock bag, and features two colour artwork cards, plus a black & white inlay. The theme of the artwork seems to be mental unwell children & mental health issues in genreal. On one side of the artwork there’s a picture of a disturbed looking child with the words “ I have several children who I’m turning in to killers, wait till they grow-up”. And on the other side there's an out of focus picture of what looks like a human hand covered in some sort of white cloth, with one of the fingers stripped down to flesh & bone. Along with this is more unsettling written texts like “Sick of Living/ unwilling to die” and “Cut, clean, if red clean blood”. The whole package adds a nice creepy & unsettling vibe to the release. The first untitled track comes in at the 15.14 mark, and it’s built a layered & shifting ‘wall’, which is made up of several subtle shifting layers of fairly simlar toned jittering, juddering, roasting & churning noise. The ‘wall’ sort of slowly sways, batters & bays around you; creating this sort of violent spectral storm as if you are surrounded by a thick mass of billowing, raging & battering ghosts. The track remains dense/ layered through-out, yet Nihil continues to subtle shift the layers of noise to great atmospheric & brutal effect. The second untitled track comes in at dead-on the 15 minute mark, and the best way to described this is what I imagine hell might sound like. Once again this ‘wall’ is very much made up of layers of texture/ noise that our fed together into a brutal & unsettling mass. The ‘wall’ is built around a constant billowing/ roasting textural run, and this surrounded by a shifting stew of: backwards sounding textural rush, baying & muffled voice like textures, buried forking & evil sound like guitar harmonics, on/off hissing/ smashing noise textures, and all manner of other unsettling sonic flotsam & jetsam. The track is truly brutal, crushing and overwhelming, yet at the same time it’s damn atmospheric & unsettling too. With out doubt this is my favourite moment of the release as there’s some much going on here, and it's overwhelming in such a intense yet enjoyable manner. The third untitled track is the longest of the three at 19.02. The ‘walls’ built around a mixture of: a slowed juddering ‘n’ semi crusty tone, a mid paced jittering tone that has quite aquatic type feel to it, and a under water filter like rumble. Over the course of the track the juddering & jittering tone seem to have a little bit of shift & movement in them, but the water filter texture seems fairly fixed & barrowing like in it’s feel. As the track progresses it seems to become more pressing & airless, bringing to mind the feeling get more & more tangled & weighted down in a mass of underwater reeds.
Each of the three tracks that make up “Supreme Nudity” create their own distinctive sonic setting, and each is compelling & consistent as each other. I’ve long enjoyed Die Reitenden Leichen work, but I must say this release stands as some of the best work I heard from this project. Roger Batty
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