Howlround, Marta De Pascalis

Tape-head-to-tape-head, Marta De Pascalis and Howlround share this split side of coruscating recordings made in a former Buddhist Monastery for The Tapeworm’s vinyl (and other formats) sister label; The Wormhole. The results are, as they describe them, “dramatically un-Zen”. Up top on Her Core, Italian artist Marta De Pascalis coaxes her tape loops into a swelling tempest of white hot harmonic anguish and guttural bass waves, sustaining and stressing the intensity ’til the thing burns itself out like the condemned final eon of a celestial object.

After that lushly exfoliating experience, Howlround’s side offers an excellent contrast, using four slightly battered Uher tape recorders and two loops to pinch the soundfield and get right up yer nasal cavity for a properly hypnotic blowhole buzz which soon enough expectorates a flood of spectral ectoplasm and wretched pulsating noise.