Wilt – She Walks the Night 7” EP (Husk)
It looks like a one-man USBM 7”, alright, but the elitist fans of that terminally limited boys club will be giving this one the cold shoulder in no time. Sure, some of those records are pretty challenged when it comes to dynamics, but there’s usually a drum-kit nearby and an egomaniacal cobweb-crotch to sit behind it, who will likely fail at delivering what the chosen genre demands. This … this is a drone record, and not the type of drone that happens when drums are barely played and mixed super-low into the sub-cardboard box realm. Yep, befitting the cover art and, I guess, the band’s logo, it’s a pretty dark strain of drone, but drone nonetheless, especially the A-side’r, “She Walks the Night.” Percussion-less, and with instrumentation of unknown type (probably some kind of keys), the Goth-literate tone is suitably creepy and not at all cheapened by the cheapest chill-tactic of them all: Wilt greets listeners within a few seconds is a public-domain recording of a wolf howling. Thankfully, it only happens once. Assisting the creep-out factor is the regular sound of what could be a woman walking, with heels on, over a concrete floor. Whether or not this is occurring at night is anyone’s guess. Or it could be the sound of someone disassembling and reassembling a rifle……or rummaging through the family’s token “junk” drawer in the kitchen. On the flip we get two more tracks, and both work a lot better than the A-side. It should be mentioned that this is in fact a single-person affair (James P. Keeler), and considering I’ve heard much less and much more mediocre crap credited to full bands, Mr. Keeler deserves the attention of those who gobble up Coil, Current 93, Mortiis, and jailhouse-era Burzum. He is joined by a guest on “Cold Grave,” and I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that those noises came from a human’s mouth. On “Haunting the Chapel” (if this is the Slayer song, someone needs to win 2010’s Best Deconstructionist award), an ominous bass-line moves the guitar and Wolf Eyes-ish “folding table of noise” along at a crawl, and I’m left patting myself on the back for scrapping the habit of hitting the diggity-dank right before bedtime. Husk Records hails from middle-of-nowhere Kentucky and this is its 28th release. Kudos. (http://huskrecords.blogspot.com)
(Andrew Earles)
