I don’t know a lot about Doodshoofd. I don’t know how to pronounce the artist name (though I do like to think it’s pronounced with an emphasis on the end “d”); I don’t know what the English translation of his titles are; I don’t know whhere Almelo, Netherlands is (and that is a good indictment of the American education system). But I do know that Doodshoofd is a dude who loves to pack his discs with all manner of harsh static walls, and even though most of his releases say “no-fi wall noise”, I can tell you that Doodshoofd releases are mastered quite loud.
Geenheidsworst certainly looks DIY. It comes in a plastic sleeve with a coated CD-R, a combination of silver with pink edging. There are a couple inserts: the cover art, which is printed and quite dark so I can’t really make out what it is with a flip side being the same, and a back cover which details the tracklisting. It’s not a very attractive layout, but it doesn’t really need to be with the ugly walls on this disc.
“Dikke Lul, Kleine Dood” starts things off with a static spray that features somewhat fluctuating feedback atop it. There’s also a feeling that this is a jet taking off on your stereo, because in the background after the feedback cuts out is a looping sonic pulse that sounds like a jet cutting through the air in the distance. This creates a hypnotic effect as the listener follows the texture inside the static, and like most Doodshoofd, the track sticks in this wall for most of the track with occasional breaks which add feedback or oscillating textures.
Second is “Ambacht En Ongeluk”, tacking on another twenty minutes to the release. This one’s much more bassy, still with that static sizzle but with a rigorous amount of juddering in the mix that rarely switches pitch or jumps out of its flickering fast pace. This one’s pretty straight-forward, and it doesn’t change – at all – through its makeup until it devolves at the end.
At three-quarters of an hour, the title track “Geenheidsworst” makes up the bulk of this release. It’s an immense track, full of pattering bass patterns that move at a fast clip with flowing and receding static. Despite what seems like little change, there are a few tweaks Doodshoofd uses to submerge the sound and lower it into more static. The track chugs along, at times shifting into sharp stabs of static and others continuing a very subdued, low-key monotone of bass pulsing underneath juddering static. Part of what makes this such an engaging 45 minutes is the fact that Doodshoofd is exploring what his initial noise sounds like layered under different textures, how subtle changes in static can affect the fluctuations of plodding bass. It might seem like a futile, simplistic effort to stretch a track – and sometimes it is – but it can also be very rewarding.
Geenheidsworst packs a lot of harsh noise into one CD-R, and this is true of a lot of his releases. While some seem stagnant, there’s always just a little bit of toying and instrumentation going on behind the scenes, and it’s more apparent on the title track than any other piece on here because of its tendency to stay almost totally rigid while switching the noise between different lenses. Certainly worth a listen for harsh noise wall fans, and regular listeners might enjoy the shifting sections featured in some parts of the track.
http://memorywavetransmission.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/doodshoofd-geenheidsworst-cd-r-not-on-label/
