reviews

This Death House - Outlet zine - UK - 1983

"Crawling. a windswept island of desolation currents, creating a picture of creeping, infinite coldness. Full of trickling instruments pressing downward upon a frozen keyboard. It's deepness is only interrupted by the computer-like jabbering of the machine it serves.
Dead of night.the same arctic framework with the addition of a lone keyboard figure and a rushing of air. sometimes it bubbles, sometimes it festers like an open, untreated wound. these cold winds will seep through the marrow of your bones and chill you."

This Death House - Regen magazine - USA - 2008

Attrition's first official album, remastered and reissued, reveals the darkwave project's roots in gritty electronic experimentation.

Remastered and reissued for the first time in a decade, the latest version of ...This Death House , Attrition's first official release, holds up surprisingly well. Sure, it lacks the polish of the seminal darkwave act's later work; you won't find a lot of guest violins or operatic vocals here, or even the industrially-tinged goth of The Fiftieth Gate , but founder Martin Bowes' penchant for evocative electronic soundscapes and dark ambient moods is already in evidence. Consisting of two 23-minute tracks,
...This Death House is a primitive but effective excursion into bleak atmospheric manipulation. "Crawling" is eerie soundtrack stuff in the vein of such Bowes contemporaries as Lustmord and SPK, all low-end analog drones and bass-heavy fuzz. While occasional randomized beeps in the vein of old science fiction films giving the song a retro but unsettling tone not unlike John Carpenter's earliest soundtrack compositions.
"Dead of Night" is harsher and heavier, less subtly chilling than deliberately noisy, with rumbling industrialized percussion shaking the foundations while squealing sirens and grating squeaks loop up above. With its electronic mewling and rubbery squeaks contrasted against oppressive layers of distortion, it manages to be confrontational without resorting to the punishing frequencies and high-volume feedback of fellow sonic pioneers of the time like Boyd Rice or Whitehouse.
While fans of Attrition's more polished, classically-inspired work might find ...This Death House to be a bit raw for their taste, these early experiments offer an intriguing insight into Bowes' take on dark ambient music, and make for an interesting contrast with his recently released All Mine Enemys Whispers , a more polished take on similarly morbid themes.

This Death House - Gothtronic - Holland - 2008

The sky is gray and rags of mist are hanging over the fields and over the grave yard behind the old Victorian church. There is a light coming from behind the window of the mortuary and I sense some flickering sounds in the cold whistling wind. A slow melody evolves and is there to stay with a gloomy steadiness.

“Crawling” is the first ghostly scene on This Death House which is originally released in 1982 on cassette and has a dark mesmerizing but threatening atmosphere with a constantly repeating slow and morbid melody entwined in ambient. “Dead of Night” is more propulsive and aggressive with a rumbling rhythm. Atmospherically it is a continuation of “Crawling” but now it seems there is danger coming from that window and it gets alarming as you get gripped by the feeling of running.

This Death house is a live improvisation recorded without any overdubson a four track portable studio in Coventry , England in 1982. This CD is number one of an ongoing series of ambient/soundscapes works. And I can assure you this sounds promising for this is an interesting release with real dark ambient. “Dead of Night” even has some ritualistic influences which makes it even more dark for it is an unknown ritual performed inside This Death House.

This early live recording is definitely different from what Attrition does in recent days and I was surely pleasantly surprised when I put on This Death House the fist time and it will definitely not be the last time. This is a highly recommended ambient work and is absolutely suitable for those who want to explore this genre for it is melodic and rhythmic as well with nice “Gothic” elements in their music and atmosphere.