Her Core / Hard Core

Description

The shadowy forces behind The Tapeworm are delighted to announce the latest release to come flying out of The Wormhole. On a limited edition split LP two of Europe’s foremost exponents of the tape loop go head-to-head, recorded within the hallowed environs of a former Buddhist Monastery – with dramatically un-Zen results.

On one side, Italian composer Marta De Pascalis mixes loops and analogue synthesis to create densely layered collages of glowing melodic shards and growling bass distortion, her hypnotic minimal synth figures warping and whirling around each other before dissolving into entropic oblivion. ‘Her Core’ is a rusty, sand-blasted slab of heaviness that provides the perfect continuation from her two solo albums – a hall of mirrors collapsing in on itself, over and over.

Meanwhile, Howlround is in full contraction mode on ‘Hard Core’, heading directly into the murky innards of a quartet of vintage reel to reel machines and using live tape delay to create syncopated rhythmic pulses, crackles and squelches that founder member Robin The Fog describes as ‘accidental gabber’. Originally rising to notoriety through sonic portraits of entire buildings, here Howlround dramatically scale down the subject matter to concentrate on mapping out the endless psychedelic dimensions of a circuit board, discovering a whole new world of creative potential in the process.

Both sets were recorded live at London venue Iklectik during the fall of 2017 at “A Can of Worms”, an event to celebrate The Tapeworm’s 100th release. What’s perhaps most remarkable about this LP is that it captures a pair of artists in a snapshot, in parallel. Here, Howlround shakes off the back catalogue, stepping out of the comforting confines of the studio. De Pascalis plays harder than ever before. Both artists taken by a moment, into the harsh glare of the unknown. The fact that each has created their noisiest and most abrasive work yet will surely be seen as a happy coincidence. A can of worms, indeed…