In the world of heavy music, few bands embrace dynamics and negative space like Oakland, CA’s Kowloon Walled City. Since forming 17 years ago, the band has increasingly refined its deconstructed approach to noise rock, math rock, and sludge.

Celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, Persistent Vision is proud to present a much needed reissue of Kowloon Walled City’s first album, Gambling on the Richter Scale . Initially released in 2009, the album laid the groundwork for a series of subsequent albums over the years including Container Ships, Grievances, and Piecework, released via labels such as Neurot Recordings, Gilead Media, and Brutal Panda Records.

This early album is a snapshot of the band’s sound in a much dirtier, noisier, sludgier environment. Kowloon Walled City have always been a band focused on tone and atmosphere with their unique style of heaviness, and the very intentional grit on this album shows another face to a band that has grown to embrace a cleaner, overdriven sound in recent years.

Gambling on the Richter Scale was recorded and mixed by guitarist vocalist Scott Evans, whose engineering work includes Sumac, Great Falls, Old Man Gloom, and many others. The record comes packaged in a full color matte finish jacket with two color vinyl variants, Ice Blue & Black Galaxy and Violet & Black Galaxy, each limited to 150 copies.