wsr: chambers

On its return to the Sam Kerridge's Contort label, Emanuele Porcinai's WSR project renders a dense, gut-wrenching session combining self-built string instruments and field recordings in a sort of shoegazing noise-techno stress test. Chambers was written over the course of the last three years between Manchester, Florence and Berlin, and pursues the themes of structural decay and melancholic ambience from his Stainless debut into a more coruscating, haunting zone of hypnagogic sound design and textural expression. Porcinai's self-built string instruments, guitar and field recordings are processed and layered with additional cello and double bass by Thomas Griffiths in a seamless movement of eight parts cleft over two sides, giving ample room for the sometime techno artist to thoroughly, systematically draw out and exasperate his instrument's character in a way that recalls Colin Stetson "beasting" his sax as much as some sore-as-fuck JK Flesh recording or his label mates, SØS Gunver Ryberg or Sam Kerridge, for that matter. It feels like music purpose built for the transition of seasons and darker, longer nights where there's nothing to do but get your head stuck right in the jaws of a slab like this. Porcinai has collaborated with Rabit and Shapednoise. Special edition detachable cover; Edition of 500.