Lee Stokoe has been active for two decades but has maintained a relatively low profile with limited and self released recordings, with his biggest claim to fame having spent time with the legendary Skullflower. Like that band’s head Matthew Bower, Stokoe works heavily with guitars and a legion of guitar pedals, but the result is less raw and aggressive, and more hypnotic and minimalist. Across these two side-long pieces are repeated, meditative drones that seem to lurk just out of view, in a distant fog or mist.
The A side of this LP, "How She Cut Herself," is all deep muffled guitar noise.Surging, slow paced rhythms are there, but out of reach.Via filtering and reverb, he places the source of this racket somewhere in the distance, almost perfectly emulating the sound of a black metal guitar noise squall coming from a garage just down the street.Elements of harsh noise are definitely here in its singular, wall-like approach to sound, but it is never that jarring or oppressive.Throughout its 17-minute duration it hardly changes, and when it does it is mostly due to variations in frequency or equalizer settings being shifted.
On the other side, "An Oath" retains that distant, obscured effect to the sound, but has more variation and diversity throughout.Slowly rising swells of guitar begin the piece, and a wider sonic spectrum is present.Throughout the muffled recording, a multitude of harmonics become prominent amongst the unrelenting walls of noise.Harsher, forceful stabs of feedback pierce through here and there, only to pull away again, as minor variations push the composition toward a tenser, bass heavy conclusion.
Gateshead Graves is definitely not a recording everyone could appreciate.Its staunch minimalism and intentionally repetitive nature are an acquired taste, as is its idiosyncratic production style.However, the change and variation that is underlying makes for fascinating walls of sound that are closer in approach to Vomir or The Rita than a guitar-based project, but even compared to those projects the sound is more dynamic and nuanced, resulting in a difficult, but powerful record.
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