A rather weird coincidence (or maybe not) - after grabbing the random disc from the shelf for reviewing and while trying to know the project better, I notice that Hour of the Wolf is a HNW unit of Andreas Brandal whose album I've reviewed a couple of days ago. Well, let's see what this musician is capable of not only in ambient, but in particular extremum of noise - harsh noise wall. I don't know how much the titles of the album and the project are associated with movies of Ingmar Bergman and how much with reality, but a cold winter night suits perfectly for listening to this disc. CDr was released in edition of 33 as one of albums from Irritant series in Italian label of Fabrizio de Bon - Toxic Industries. In the album there's one long, playing for more than 40 minutes, wall. It begins from the sounds of preparation for the recording session I guess - you can hear connecting cables, contact microphones touching surfaces and so on. It would be good to louden it, but I still doubt. A short sample of man's voice, talking in Italian and the awaited wall of noise explodes. Thick, dense and viscous monolith of distorted sound delights my ears not only with lower frequencies, weight and beauty of sound, but also with variety of slow moving layers and weirdly oppressive atmosphere. Disc is not absolutely static - soft distorted and slightly reverbed wall is from time to time torn apart by surfacing middle cracklings, short and light moments of disappearance or alternation of layers, but all that happens securely and as if intrinsically. These 40+ minutes are intended for concentration - towards yourself, towards surroundings, towards noise... And under the thick fabric of foreground wall, a separate world of sound exists - life, movement, tiny details of changing sound that suddenly becomes of utter importance and I sometimes even doubt myself whether I was caught by the sound too deeply already and all these details don't exist or if this truly happens. When you flow in this sea of sounds you don't want them to end and after the disc plays its last seconds, you want more and more and more. I couldn't say that I listen to HNW very often and I'm surely not HNW orthodox, but there exist such records that truly pleasantly surprise me. One of them - this Hour of the Wolf release. One of the best walls I've heard lately.

Format: CDr
Released: 2010
Label: Toxic Industries
Edition: 33