Heavy Breathing – Severe C30

Fever Recordings

Immediately very noticeable about this package is the extra cardboard box, high contrast silk-screening and lo-fi images of various Muslim women in traditional burkas. The sparse artwork highlights the basics of the packaging as well as the minimal textures one might overlook had the design been too engaging.

The sound here is quite understated as well. With a lo-fi production quality it represents the rough aesthetic well. Although this isn’t caveman electronic; it’s well composed and layered to form a formidable wall of aggressive sound in a power electronics and industrial format. Heavy Breathing’s sound here isn’t cut-up or angular though, it’s menacing and heavy. The first two tracks Sever and Nothing Here Now have elements that fade in slowly, pulling at the edges of sanity and layering textures of noise to create a thick paste of atmosphere that just seems to drag me down, slowly sap my morale.

Among the droning noise there always seems to be echoing junk metal hits, and an air of industrial hum about things. At the turn of Side B Heavy Breathing takes aim for something different with the frantic synth arpeggios of Sterile which works really well and helps up the variety and tenseness of the album. With a noise wall that drops out about halfway through to let the synth breath for a second before going back into a tortured synth noise outtro this is just the thing that is upping the game for Heavy Breathing.

Severe is a great recording of lo-fi noise and power electronics truly embodying a createive D.I.Y. ethic and aesthetic edge. Everything about this release comes off as quite successful and is definitely a great starting point for this artist.

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