- Italian producer Shapednoise sits in the noisy techno camp between Vatican Shadow and the many projects of Shifted—emphasis on "between." His music keeps one foot in abstraction and one somewhere near a dance floor. Forgetting his techno-oriented work as one half of Violetshaped, Until Human Voices Wake Us, his first release for Opal Tapes, is his most snarling music yet.
"Witness Of An Heart Attack Death" starts with the promise of a beat, but the crooked gait is pulled apart into heart-stopping throbs that plunge into silence. "Between Hallucinations And High Poetry" feels like an old rave tape-pack, sped-up and half lost to decay. Cribbing from the early Vatican Shadow playbook, the title track scrapes at a dramatic string sample with washes of face-melting noise.
That spirit carries over to "Information On The Individual Sensoriality," which is essentially a sheet of smouldering white noise. Rhythm is re-introduced on "Survival Of The Dead," but here it's curdled and noxious. The EP winds down with a corrosive nightcap in "Black Cells," which is so chewed-up it's barely recognizable as music. Over and over again, what's most impressive about Shapednoise's hellish sound is its intensity. It feels like he's constantly trying to outmuscle the entire noise techno movement, and so even when he doesn't sound wholly original, you can't deny his power.
Tracklist A1 Witness Of An Heart Attack Death
A2 Between Hallucinations And High Poetry
A3 Until Human Voices Wake Us
B1 Information On The Individual Sensoriality
B2 Survival Of The Dead
B3 Black Cells