Morc Rec. 
Edgar Wappenhalter/Urpf Lanze/Hellvete (B,2011)*°'
Morc released this EP of 3 friends, 3 projects, from which at least two of them are co-operators with and stimulated by the Kraak organisation. Kraak has its own magazine and festival, are also concert promoters and organisers for which they also have their own agenda as a collective supporting their own sharing ground for a private underground, first as an invention of their own kind, like a platform to exist even before the cult is really there. At least two of the musicians involved here, with their own daytime jobs, have a second life in all the bunkers in Belgium and beyond they could find, echoing their own wallpapers against the concrete walls. Starting with the attitude of professionals, there has been work done on the camouflage and the surface has been sanded in various ways sooner or later it will and shall become interesting, a life of its own, until the eyes gleam from the dark and like sound worms look for prey into a new pair of ears.
Urpf Lanze or Wouter Vanhaelemeesch has his own label audioMER, interested in the weird side of picking artists, is also known for his eye-catching graphic art collage used on his own releases and also for this release. His contribution is like the loner version of his field, with wrongly tuned or detuned guitar, rambling with handshaking strums, with voice growling/moaning of his voice, picking somewhat, between nonsensical deeper concentration with moody effect and a well packed almost beautiful camouflage of senile amateurism, with hanging loose strings. The primitivism of it can be painful at times, while the area itself is interesting, finding something new. It works for one track.
Edgar Wappenalter starts with an electric picking track with lots of echoing, with repeated chords, improvised and repetitive towards a tedious sense, a real podium track with distant recorded singing, another loner on stage. The second part is more interesting, almost like a second track. We hear a droning tone like a deep horn from a ship, mixed with guitar and a recording of deformed Arab (?) speech and Middle Eastern clarinet, where a doom bass loop is being repeated with it. The combination of all this makes sense.
The third contribution is from band (Sylvester Anfang) and label-colleague Hellvete, who I saw live once before paired with Marissa Nadler, then recommended by the Kraak organiser who like to build concert contrasts of noise with acoustics, explaining me this one man-band was behind the Funeral Folk Label, and that he was a fan of Ash-Ra Temple, which made me curious. But that particular concert I found extremely boring, with layers of guitar echo recordings pedalled in loops, shoegazing with vague even completely uninteresting ideas. But this EP recording however I found much more rewarding, perhaps because of the complexity, deliberately or not adapted in its sonic context. Here some of the sounds built up are composed from electrified and looped bowed strings in layers of interaction. It is as if I’m hearing a new symphony behind the drones, or is it only an evolution of tonal tensions, the result is that this aspect makes it interesting with a sonic life on its own.
It was a good idea from the Morc label to combine these three tracks. In this way before one hears too well the minor points, a perfect other sound spectrum is being expressed in the next track.
