Wallkeeper - Kept Alive To Be Drowned Again (2019)

Musically, to some people, the genre of Harsh Noise Wall isn't even music. It is sound. Heavy, gnawing, abrasive, and a rejection of traditional concepts of craftsmanship, arrangement and music itself. HNW is maybe the utmost complex tonal arrangement you have ever heard - it might be the equivalent to Kasimir Malewitsch's black square - music in its most elemental and extreme form. And yet, being so, many HNW artists lose themselves in questions of purism and formalism; both questions the Wallkeeper doesn't care so much about.
Wallkeeper is one of the many monikers of Sisto Rossi, a key figure of the german noise scene. Being around since the beginning of the 00s, Sisto is as much into sound research as he is into sound as a full body experience as he is into 80s horror c-movies as he is one of the most humorous and unique humans you will ever meet.
As Wallkeeper, he literally does what the name might foreshadow: he's keeping these walls up, as primal and pure as possible. And as much as the title of the tape, „Kept Alive To Be Drowned Again", might be a nod to a horror flick of your choice, it's also a commentary on life in the era of capitalist realism. In this sense, Wallkeeper's version of HNW is less about the extreme imagery that might be typical for the genre, and more a field recording of the endless days and dreamless nights of the anthropocene.
It is best listened to while laying down, breathing deep, eating your iphone. Mr. Rossi - build these walls up high!