Watching Heat On Mute - Torn Hawk (NNF419)

Valcrond Videographer Luke Wyatt is a versatile figure in the fields of art and experimental entertainment, with a body of work spanning mulched techno, hypnagogic rock, spoken word, and avant stand-up. His latest, Watching Heat On Mute, marks a return to the tape-hazed instrumental “smear style” showcased on Torn Hawk’s 2014’s classic Through Force Of Will, which Wyatt describes as a mix of “bleeding guitars, harsh-beautiful watercolor landscapes, songs about movies, soundtracks by cops.”

Years of artistic exploration have honed the Hawk’s chops and sharpened its vision, culminating in a ten-track hit parade of hooks, heroics, and poetic shredding, riffed and spliced over broken baggy beats. Swooning downtempo guitar fugues (“Two Footprints and a Pillar of Flame”) and triumphant VHS heartbreak anthems (“Her Blur”) slipstream into kaleidoscopic amplifier worship (“A Burnt Map”) and out-of-body slacker shoegaze reveries (“The Fly With Jeff Goldblum”). Like city sunsets shot on recycled camcorder tape, this is grainy, gritty, handheld music, bleached but true, flickering with static and cinematic emotion.