Slow Murder - Less Being.

Slow Murder – Less Being – Cassette/Zine/Download – Self Released – 2019.

Direst Link to artist BandCamp - https://slowmurder.bandcamp.com/

Recent release onOutsider Art - https://outsiderart.bigcartel.com/product/slow-murder-warped-skin

    1.       Special Interest Pt. 1.

    2.       Glass.

    3.       Mist.

    4.       Special Interest Pt. 2.

    5.       Less Being.

Another UK noise artist that I had not heard before, my attention alerted from a Facebook post by Ordeal by Roses. I love Ordeal by Roses, so I am investigating this tip off.  This is described as Queer Noise, Queer and Trans noise is a boiling pot of greatness of late. (Niku Daruma, Straight Panic, Closer Bones, Clowndoll, Doughgirl Tapes….) This album was recorded in Cardiff, that is very exciting, Wales is very amazing, seriously.

Sharp, blasting Harsh Noise opens the work, this shifts through passages of harshness, the tendency towards tonal listener abuse is akin to what Hydra specialised in, I like this ethos. There is a barren feel to the work as it breaks down to singular, sparse elements before rebuilding, which then inserts dynamics and depth into the builds and breakdowns.

Glass seems to amplify the barren undertones of the opening track and build noisy from there. What’s forms is a churning desolate landscape of rumblings and splattered distortion that radiates hostility. The feedback seems to sing, a lone voice never eclipsed by its surroundings that eventually taunts the listener by cutting through everything with precision.

Mist is where we hit the Welshness of the project and this is very important. Ordeal by Roses seems to pull in and throw back their environment as a landscape for the noise to act out, to the point where it is natural. This is a prime, amplified example of that, I am feeling the landscapes that dominate all my frequent trips to Wales (family) and it is seriously impressive. This starts minimally and has massive build ups that are dragged into tunnel like sound restriction. Mist is the self amplified through its environment, sometimes the impotence of the self is a key component to Power Electronics, an acting out, a revenge, this is the opposite of that, it is as if the artist has stood naked in front of the amplification to cut the themself into the sound.

Scraping back to emptiness in Special Interests Part 2, as noise builds that echoing, tunnelling returns and resonates massively. This is more listener abuse, we’ve been given a full dose of who Slow Murder is, time to be tortured for a while. Less Being carries that on immediately and subtlety as we are dragged through brief passages of raw sonic abuse. As the pain builds layers, the atmospherics seem to resonate an Industrial Landscape as if referencing change and growth. The way the work morphs is constant and rapid, even the use of percussive noise is excellently effective as it leads to the massive endsplosion of the self again.

This is just great and discovering stuff like this makes this blog worth it. Had I discovered this in 2019, it would have easily made my years top 10. The strength of this project is quite simple, the insertion and amplification of the self through noise technique. I am now a fan for sure.

Nevis Kretini 2020.