Wolf Eyes
»Black Wings Over The Sand«

Heavily psychedelic. Minimal. Slow mindbending stuff... Highly recommended, a future classic!

Since Wolf Eyes formation during the end of the 90s up until today, their musical output has grown into an impressive oeuvre and gained them successes granted only a few bands. Their style places them somewhere in the border area between experimental music, freeform, noise and harsh industrial. "Black Wing Over The Sand" is one long
session (on vinyl divided on side A and B) that from the very first beginning lays bare the roots of Wolf Eyes: here is an evident presence of the industrial music of the early 1980s with bands such as Throbbing Gristle, Maurizio Bianchi (MB) and Gary Mundy’s cassette label Broken Flag.

Instead of the harsh dissonances and compact walls of noise Wolf Eyes are well known for, the wholly instrumental piece moves slowly forward over a basis of silence. In that way Black Wing Over The Sand belongs to one of the band’s more accessible pieces of music, and is an excellent introduction to the dark cosmos of Wolf Eyes. With oscillating movements, Wolf Eyes conjure up short bursts of noise with
screaming high pitched tones where a rhythmic deep and slow bass soon sets in, disappears, returns, increases pace, disappears and returns again. Electric guitar, echo effects and sweeping sounds creates powerfully nerved effects over the slow rhythm.

Black Wing Over The Sand is yet another proof of how Wolf Eyes, simultaneously looking backwards and distinctly lets themselves be influenced by the hidden musical undercurrents that lies most close to their heart, with little means and creative raftsmanship succeeds in creating something altogether new, exciting and always unexpected.

Black Wing Over The Sand, now released on vinyl (limited to 900 copies) and shortly on CD, is a co- release from Kning Disk and iDEAL Recordings. The album cover and inner sleeves features art illustration by Andreas Nilsson, Fredrik Söderberg och Alivia Zivich.

Opinions

»As the follow-up to their impressive Sub Pop blast, Human Animal, Wolf Eyes have tunnelled back underground to temporarily join up with the combined forces of sound art label Kning Disk and Swedish noise connoisseurs Ideal.

The resulting product is, as expected, superbly realised both sonically and visually, with a strange Sabbat ritual collage decorating the rear of the record cover, while the inner sleeve has a full colour painting of burning mould, reminiscent of a still from a
work by underground film maker Stan Brakhage. The music haunting the grooves fits these images perfectly, as Wolf Eyes continue to worry at the putrefying sore that has infested their sound since fast year's River Slaughter double. Although they have never last their original Metal jag, it has become more abstract, fragmented and curiously refined.

Black Wing Over The Sand could be read as the next stage of Wolf Eyes' ongoing progression into the unknown. Its two long tracks slowly and carefully flicker into action as some distant guitar turbine begins to churn out a Black Metal heat over the sound of heavy machinery being moved from one room to another. As the record unravels, other electronic sound illusions are filtered into the mix, with distant
cicadas opening the atmospheric second side before somebody throws a well-aimed monkey wrench in the works and the sparks begin to fly.

Echoes of restrained guitar feedback merge with the twittering of the various homemade electronic appliances that come to hand, together with a crashing together of metallic objects that give the session a satisfyingly sinister, razored edge.«
- Edwin Pouncey, The WIRE / Issue 278 / April 2007.

»Black Wing Over The Sand är ett enda långt stycke. Den (o)roande psykdeliska resan tar ungefär 40 minuter och börjar i långsamt vaggande grindcoretakt. Det låter som åsksmällar på rundgång, ungefär som man ser fram emot en snyting. Och så nästa, mer sprak i spektrat, rasslande cymbaler, en elgitarr (med betoning på el), lager på lager av hemvirad elektronik, ylande, skärande, torterat.« - Sven Rånlund, Sound of Music.

»"It’s always cause for rejoice in my little world when a new Wolf Eyes album comes my way… admittedly that’s pretty often, they’re a shockingly prolific act, but this latest limited piece of wax from Sweden’s Ideal label is something to really get excited about. The band broke heady new ground last year with the utterly shocking ‘Human Animal’, and they are showing no sign of letting up on ‘Black Wing Over the Sand’ – a veritable masterclass in menacing circuit bent noise. Showing a restraint only occasionally heard on ‘Human Animal’ and even less evident on ‘Burned Mind’, ‘Black Wings Over the Sand’ bears some relation to last year’s double album (on Dominick Fernow’s Hospital imprint) ‘River Slaughter’. With cavernous drones and long, barely audible passages we are coaxed out of a damaged oblivious doom by fractured electronic shards and malfunctioning electronic equipment. This is garage punk music as rewired by small children with Space Lego and a tool set, or academic electronics produced by a garage punk musician… it’s so wrong and at the same time everything that is perfect about modern experimental music. Wolf Eyes are easily one of the most consistently engaging acts around at the moment, and ‘Black Wings Over the Sand’ simply shows that they are going to be a force to be reckoned with for some time to come. Of course it’s hideously limited (900 LPs for the world!) and gorgeously presented. Buy it before it disappears forever..." -Boomkat, UK..

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