I remember once, a few years ago, back when I started Void Worship, formulating - more to myself than to anyone in particular - what were to be the tenets of my new label. While I had been content with the labels I had run before, my intention with Void Worship was more particular and precise: to offer a strictly curated catalog of, broadly speaking, fringe, experimental or avant-garde works that, each to itself, would to me be the absolute pinnacle of its respective field of musical exploration, and that were innovative or ground-breaking in at least some fashion. (Of course, Void Worship is also home to a few of my own works - I do not wish to claim any level of innovativeness or ground-breakingness for these works; all I can say is that they are square within the aesthetic vision of Void Worship.)
As such, I was thrilled to host Mitchell Rotunno's searing - and intimately personal - harsh noise project (A)Sex; Erika Yume Hayashi's absolutely quintessential HNW project Shurayuki-Hime (in a tribute to yet another HNW legend, Female Harakiri, no less); Waldo Pardon's supremely brilliant hip-hop tape Dogglefox. Hearing these works stirred endless excitement in me, the sheer feeling of bliss upon being confronted with a product of genius.
Sheer bliss is exactly what Uboa's Coma Wall is to me. A crushing, almost 23-minute track, it provides absolute catharsis through its extraordinary amalgamate of hardcore, doom, sludge and harsh noise, an at times free-form - yet at all times immaculately structured - crescendo of pummeling drums, deafening cymbals and thundering guitar and bass,; a current of unsettling ambient noises and droning howls running underneath without end; Xandra Metcalfe's cries, howls, screams, pleas piercing the musical onslaught, searching for release. To describe the track in too much detail is almost akin to spoiling it, so I will refrain from saying too much. All you need to know is that this work is absolutely essential.
Originally self-released digitally in 2015. Current edition of baby blue C46 tapes, limited to 50 copies. The digital version of Coma Wall can be streamed and purchased on Uboa's Bandcamp, here:
uboa.bandcamp.com/album/coma-wall
"Nothing will ever spare you from the void, except the void itself."
released September 20, 2018