Dead Body Collection - Highways of Tears [Autistic Campaign - 2015]Highways of Tears is the latest slice of blunt, brutal & unrelenting walled noise from this high prolific Serbian based project. It comes in the form of a C40 cassette tape on French noise label Autistic Campaign, in an edition of 50 copies. The release takes it’s name & theme from a 800-mile stretch of Canadian road, where around 43 women have gone missing/ or have been murdered over a 30 year period. And both ‘walls’ here are suitably bleak, battering, and hopeless to fit the releases theme. The doubled sided labelled cassette comes in a white sleeve, that features blood red text/ landscape pictures (taken near the highway). With a secondary tracing paper front cover featuring one of five different pictures of one of the victims, with their eyes crossed out- there are 10 copies of each variation. The whole thing is topped off with a inlay card with track information, and a hand number in red pen ink. Side A’s track is entitled "The Suffering Of Strangers". This track pulls together a deep & bone rumbling bass drone, with layers of simple yet effective jittering ‘n’ juddering on top. The whole thing is akin to the amp-up sound of a massive earth boring machine, and it makes ones brain feel like it’s been continual drilled & brutal vibrated in your skull. Side B’s track is "The Agony Of Friends", and this ‘wall’ brings together a compressed & tightly rolled bass judder, with several layers of similar patterned buzzing grey static jittering- these elements are both weaved into a seemingly continual slowing wall( though I think this is purely a trick of the track, and in reality the whole thing is fairly firm). The 'wall' has a wonderfully constricting & highly oppressive weighty-ness to it, and it really does seem to make ones listener space feel airless & terminal bleak. Both tracks here are satisfying in their intensity & bleakness, but I think this second track is my favourite of the two, as it has such a crushing & suffocating feel to it. So in summing if you are after incredible bleak & intense walled noise, which is totally immersed in a feeling of complete hopeless-ness & crushing stark sonic weight Highway Of Tears is worth checking in with. Roger Batty
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