LUST TAPES - ANOTHER BATCH OF FOUR

 BLOOD RAVEN – BLOOD RAVEN
ABDUCTED ORGAN – SADISTIC OBLATIONS
SATANIC RITE – DARK OMEN
VARIOUS - MUSIC FOR ASSASSINATIONS

Address: https://lusttapes.bandcamp.com/

Thirteen Vitals ago, #1479, I had the pleasure of reviewing the first four releases of the new Dutch tape label LUST Tapes. Run by Egbert van der Vliet and it is as if Egbert gets a lot of satisfaction out of this project. Here we have four new releases to review, and in the meantime, we also missed a batch of four! So it’s high productivity there at the LUST headquarters. I mean …. A LOT of LUST!

The first one of this batch is Blood Raven with his self-titled debut. Behind this project is Max, a primary school educator, and this release marks his first steps into the beautiful world of noise. That’s all we know. But it’s not the first noise project I’ve written about that contained these exact words. Granted, they’re not all named Max and that educator part only fits Howard, but well, you know what I mean.

This C60 has four untitled tracks, two per side. The first track should be considered an exercise in HNW territory. There’s not much happening, but modulation patterns and interaction between fully saturated sounds are all over the place. The second one is much more subtle and has a nice build-up where Max is searching for the sweet spots, which he does find by the way. The reverse side opens with a track which has a constant tendency to scrape the moment of feedback in the system, but it never gets to that point, resulting in a nice tension. The modulation is done by, I think, voices, so there’s a lot of activity in this wall. The final one is again almost 20 minutes, and this is an HNW where there is quite a lot happening. I just don’t know what the squealing sound is. Is it a field recording? Is it some random trigger? Who knows. But in the end, that is the beauty of HNW and harsh noise. It doesn’t matter what generates the sound, as long as you use it in a track; everything is allowed. Very nice debut! Favourite track? “Untitled”!

One of my favourite horror movies ever is Cannibal Holocaust, and that is where the cover picture comes from. We’re starting properly with Abducted Organ’s “Sadistic Oblations”. I can’t remember if the impaled girl in the movie was an actual oblation, or if it was the result of just a bit of sadism. I’ll have to rewatch the movie sometime, even if it was just to see if it makes the same impact it did 45 years ago. One thing is sure: one of the terms in “Sadistic Oblations” covers it.

This one is short—twenty minutes, ten per side, two untitled tracks. The first one is as if the left and right channels had completely different treatments during mastering. It results in a lot of stereo activity with bursts all over the place and shooting through your head. Impaled by sound. Very nicely done, though, and hypnotising to say the least. And it all continues on the reverse side. I mean, I know I’ve heard the track, I know I liked it, I know paying special attention to those left-right sounds … But I couldn’t tell you sh1t. Great.

Third in the batch is another project by Egbert himself, and it’s one with actual titles! Total playing time is 90 minutes (OMfG), and let’s just dive into it. I mean, I’ve written about this project earlier because the first batch contained two releases by Satanic Rite. I’m curious how this one relates to the previous ones, as well as how Egbert differentiates between projects so close to each other.

The first track is the 30-minute “Pugilistic Stance”, and it’s here where things go completely wrong for me. Not music-wise, hell no. Music-wise wise I’m seeing why Egbert chose different project names for his releases. The differences are very obviously there, even though they might be subtle for the unpracticed ear. Where Abducted Organ was a massive HNW with loads of saturated basses and a clear production, there was not a lot happening in the composition itself. It was the sound itself which was elevated to art. Satanic Rite has a different approach, and there is much more movement in the compositions—changes in sounds, structures, and sometimes even unexpected. The composition is much more alive, and instead of HNW – although it can be labelled as such also – these four tracks have more characteristics of ‘just’ harsh noise. And it’s because of these constant small changes you have to listen careful and so … That’s where it went wrong for me. I was listening to it while getting some stuff done, and I got into a trance. I got everything done I needed to, but I forgot to make notes and write this review. So I had to listen again. I’m writing this paragraph to explain why I’m not writing anything else about the content, but this is so far my favourite release of this batch. I only hope that “Necrophilic Gerontophile” isn’t a link to the origin of the field recordings.

The final one is a label sampler, and here we have a few more names you might know. “Music for assassinations” is a C90 featuring a couple of tracks taken from other LUST releases, along with a few exclusive tracks. Or maybe they are a preview of what is to come; we’ll find that out soon enough.

The A side has two long tracks. Abrasion Addict & Sloughed opens with “Mental Retardation”. No idea if this is politically correct, but that’s what it’s called. It can also be found on LUST Tapes #10, but we haven’t reviewed that one. Abrasion Addict I have heard of before from releases on Love Earth Music, Sloughed … No clue. This track comes to live when you play it at a bit higher volume. I think it’s so compressed that you need some extra volume to reveal those hidden layers. What you get is a massive track with lots and lots of things happening. The second track is “Study of body fluids” by Abducted Organ. This track is also new, but I think that in the previous text, I kinda captured what it’s all about. The massiveness is audible in both channels, but numerous differences make it very lively and active in your head. A little less HNW and a bit more harsh than the two 10-minute tracks on “Sadistic Oblations”, but this one is over twice as long, so that’s not a bad thing.

The B-side opens with Uncle Peter a.k.a Dr. Bibber a.k.a ODAL. The longest running noise project in the Netherlands, I think, delivered 15 minutes of a depiction of the “Hiervoormaals”. I could explain the play on words, but I won’t. It fits the ODAL style perfectly, and what we get is a great noise track without boundaries. Sometimes so over the top that you can feel the recording equipment choke. I can see Peter’s smile while doing it. The third track is by none other than Modelbau. Modelbau? On a harsh noise label? On a sampler? Yes, and even when it’s the least harsh track of the release, everything is there. The Modelbau loopy style features saturated basses and movement in all layers. It fits and forms a welcome moment of rest. Sort of. The final two tracks I’ve written about already as it’s the third and fourth tracks of the Blood Raven release that opened this review. He deserves two tracks on this album for his grand debut. So yeah. Wanna know what’s happening on LUST Tapes? Listen to “Music for Assassinations”.