Sunday, September 11, 2011

NEKRASOV - THE EVER-PRESENT


I'm very much a fan of Nekrasov's work, so when i heard they had another release in the Crucial Blast Family i was already lined up. After reading the fine print, i was intrigued yet again. I missed their recent-ish release on Ritual Stance, so i had no idea they were working within the HNW genre too. Now if your reading this, you probably have a good idea who i am. If you don't i'll give you the quick version: i LOVE HNW, i've been listening and producing HNW since the scene really came together. So i ordered this quick, and it came pretty quick as Crucial Blast is kinda close, and speedy with their shipping anyway.

So this is a 2xcdr + print zine and it also came with a button and a sticker. It's in a clear DVD style case, with full color printing on both sides of the cover. The b&w print zine is done nicely, good paper, heavy evocative imagery, my only gripe with it is that the booklet wasn't trimmed to be flat, but that's because i'm a print nerd too. Yet another visually stunning release from Crucial Blast and Nekrasov.

On to the audio. Disk 1 has 2 tracks clocking over the 30 min mark. Track one is a very dense piece, very dry to the ears, and a brittle crisp, very much in the Vomir school of HNW, as in static and un-moving. Very good piece of wall work, it has very interesting texture. Track 2 is a little brighter and not as rigid as the first track. It starts with a squealing and gets nasty real quick. So it moves a little more than the first, but it's not as dry sounding. In fact i guess it's the opposite and very saturated/wet sounding. One thing that bothers me with this one, when cranked up you can faintly hear the squeal of the oscillator (or is that feedback?) in the background. It's not super noticeable i guess to the average listener, but we had already established i'm not your average HNW listener. Midway through the track though it completely disappears that is until it gets to the end and it rears it's head again. I'm only harping on it as i think it's not a fitting tone for HNW, so if you're not a big HNW fan, ignore the fact it bothers me...

Disc 2 is one giant 66 minute opus. This disc starts with more of a hybrid of their black industrial sound with a base layer of HNW. Not like the purer HNW tracks on the first disc. To my ears it sounds like a looped sample of some sort of field recording, with a very dense layer of HNW underneath. It manages to meander a bit in sound for the hour plus duration, barely moving anywhere, but there is some movement. That being said i think this style fits them better than disc 1, so disc 2 is definitely my favorite here, it's just more meditative, and more in-line of the Nekrasov material i heard previously...

Overall i think Nekrasov's adventures in HNW are a little stale, but i do look forward to hearing more. I think they could pull it off well, hell, their black noise style work is top notch stuff... But afterall this is HNW and i doubt most people would understand it, or appreciate it as much as i do anyway. Regardless, it's WELL worth the price tag for entire package together.

Get it Here.