Walter Gross brings the dirt, opening this eight tracker with some brutal spoken word, synth snarl, and a bass drop that would hint to the biggest dubstep mutations, not unlike King Cannibal’ brutalism. It’s lodged somewhere between the bass pressure of dubstep, or even drum’n’bass, electronic and crunk synth overload, and the experimentation of renowned noise exponents. This really is an overload on the senses, Walter Gross owning up to loving the art of sampling. You can see why here; snippets have been taken from everywhere, making it nearby impossible to categorise.
I’ll go out on a limb here, many music lovers from differing favoured styles would like what is enclosed here, there is just so much sound crammed into each track, and although confronting at times (especially to my aging ears), sounds seem to naturally shift and morph into something new by the close of each track. Just as “Headhunterz†starts as what seems a brutalists take on dirty hip hop, it degrades to a wall of noise so naturally. Included is the rather superb Youth Kill screwed remix of 10shun’ “Mindfuckâ€, listed here as “10shun Findmuckâ€.
It could be a 70′ psych classic played with a totally destroyed stylus, re-grooving the record as it spins, or Muslimgauze at his most experimental with an even bigger blanket of distortion, or even John Carpenter on crack, but whatever it is, it’s brutal, in your face, an assault on the senses. If Walter Gross wants his listeners to hear him, he’ going about it the right way: you have no choice in the matter.
Wayne Stronell
