Do you know Ramleh? I sure as shit didn’t until I read an interview with them in the Wire last year. They’re from the same nasty power electronic scene as Whitehouse (Pete Best was a member of both bands). Now this fact might have you believe that like Whitehouse the music of Ramleh has a certain physical brutality to it with liberal use of the work “cunt” throughout.
In fact Ramleh (at least on this record) are not very Whitehouse-like at all. Hole In the Heart is chock full of high end drone with almost middle- eastern sounding dirges unleashed on top of clouds of whispy feedback and guitars. Kind of like Skullflower with a Muslimgauze fixation. The record itself is over two discs. The first is made up of recordings from the late 1980’s which have been remastered, redone and in some cases added to. The second disc contains the original Hole In the Heart cassette which was originally released by the band in 1987. The music contained across these two discs is compelling stuff indeed. If you’ve read about the Whitehouse comparisons and that has put you of they sure as hell aren’t evident here. I’ve become a bit of a Ramleh fan in the past few weeks so don’t be surprised to see more posts on their records soon.
Ducks Battle Satan 