Saltire is the second album of Improvised noise by Washington DC based band Bell Barrow who are one of several bands that are solo or near solo projects of Jeremy Moore. Saltire was recorded at SV Studios in DC with Jeremy Moore self-producing, with additional engineering from Andy Baldwin at Metropolis Studios.
The album opens with ambient atmospherics slowly leading into Death Lullaby almost like the slow march towards the river Styx, through a darkened chamber of foreboding, with long tonal shifts signalling all is not well. While the descent reaches darker places, phaser sounds and other noises signal a reckoning is soon to begin, a dark horror move landscape may be about to be revealed in the darkness surrounding them.
Breath Of An Acrobat doesn't make clear if it is before or after they have performed, it certainly seems the latter, no sense of calm is apparent, while synths mutate and skittery jittery percussive walls close in.
Beyond The Labyrinth down below in the darkest coldest spaces, noises ring out like screams of agony among incarcerated denizens, hoping to find a way back to the light, while miasmas of sound distort reality further, until your reality resembles a post Eraserhead world.
Sybian Interval has a train horn set against the rumbling undertow and screeching expiated amplifier hums, demarcating the break between your uses of the Sybian machine, that you have come to depend on, it has become your only source of sexual release, so consumed are you by mechanical love, a way to stop having to physically interact with other members of the human race. Stygian keyboard tonalities seep though, while you find the next fantasy you wish to will into reality when you climb back on after the Sybian interval is over.
Cor Orans clatters at your mind's cortex, depleting your energy and the fight to find a way back to the surface from deep below the Bell Barrow that has become your prison.
We Reek Of Utopia has some female vocals that quickly get overwhelmed by the noises impinging on her world, buried in feedback and distain she fights to be heard, like the victim of sex trafficking's battle to bring down there abusers, no amount of cries of whoops a daisy can ever convey the futility of the battle to be heard above the cacophony, even if the vocals were from another place entirely.
Saltire has a doomed laden feel of the devil masticating on the rotting bones of your ancestors making them pay for the despair and destruction they were involved in, a new reign of atonality has shifted your brain into even less desired spaces.
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Bolvun Arfleifoar takes us deep into the Icelandic wilderness, the cliffs are full of penguins trying to decide if they should jump or stay on the cliff, this has similar tonalities to Richard Pinheas Iceland album, only turned to much darker purposes, this is less chill out more psychic attack.
Mercenary Fetishism clatters like the darkest of dark rooms, where you go to be strapped to a table and have cigarettes stubbed out on your scrotum, air freshener sprayed up your back passage while smiling gleefully at how it makes you feel, the distress in this tune comes from the onlookers, who can't believe this is what you asked the dominatrix to do for you. She of course only does what she has been handsomely paid to do.
Fourth Stream seems to refer to exactly the amounts of streams you require to be able to claim it is a minimal bukkake party, deep resonating noises open the bowels of despair on your writhing body, while you revel in the streams splashing your prone body.
A Carrion Call Rings Out for you to collect the remains before the rats and worms feast on them, picking those bones clean, declensions and dismay bringing back the dregs of humanity, having assembled to recreate one last Epstein style party before they are all locked up and castrated.
The album closes with ripping Hearts Out Of Hell of clattering noises blowing your mind and make you want to go running barefoot across course gravel as it will be more pleasurable than hearing this album at top volume, this is an album for the lovers of harsh noise records.
Find out more at https://bellbarrow.bandcamp.com/album/saltire https://www.instagram.com/saccharineunderground/
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