Album: Dreams of a Mad Titan
Artist: Acclimate
Label: Humanhood Recordings
Catalogue no: HHR52
Tracklist:
1. Infinity
2. Warlock
3. Oblivion
4. Annihilus
5. The
World Eater
6. Mistress
Death
The artist has described
this very limited edition cassette (30 copies of which only 7 are left at time
of writing) and digital release as Ambient Industrial Space music, but don’t
for one minute think this is all whooshes and progressive swellings of major
chords, or bleeps and sci-fi stylings. There are elements of these but we’re
not talking ‘new age’ blah here: while it’s what I call a ‘quiet’ album,
insofar as it never veers into bombast or becomes overwrought, nevertheless a
creepiness lurks beneath its fabric that surreptitiously worms its way into the
subconscious leaving you puzzlingly unsettled.
‘Infinity’ opens out
majestically, filling one with expansive emotions and thoughts, its gentle
burblings and minor repeated crescendos both soothing and uplifting,
accompanied by a subtle sequenced rhythm that’s barely on the edge of audibility.
As an opener though, don’t be fooled by its lustrous beguiling shapes and
movements – as calming as it is, what follows takes the album in the opposite
direction, away from light and into the darker recesses of mind and universe.
‘Warlock’ pulses into existence, a perhaps mild harbinger of the roiling
underbelly that allows the universe to exist as it does. Shimmering accents
underscored by a persistent rhythm, counterpointing and complementing,
emphasising that one cannot exist without the necessary other.
‘Oblivion’ is where we
get to the real heart of this release: spiralling bass introduction, crunches
punctuating the emptiness, whines continually striving to climb into the
aether, dark breathings, and a distorted voice. This is not the bright vision
of ‘Inifinity’ but its complete opposite, a disturbing fractured dream that’s
vivid yet elusive and impossible to grasp – its only aftereffect being
confusion and agitation. The mood refuses to lighten up on the following
offering ‘Annihilus’, a track that only drags us deeper into the maelstrom – in
fact it begins with a rattling staccato and a machine-like turbidity, its
gravity drawing us ever inward and downward. The ghosts of dead stars and
planets abound here, their cries the only reminder they ever existed.
Don’t expect to receive
any comfort from the last two tracks either – now that we’ve been offered a
vision of the quantum truth we shall just have to accept that this is the
reality. The universe doesn’t exist for our comfort; it isn’t required to adapt
to us but we, by necessity, have to adapt to it. ‘The World Eater’ brings images of a rogue black hole, an angel
of chaos deaf to our pleas for clemency – it is simply here to act out its
nature. Rhythmical pulsings presage its approach, and gravity and matter go
awry, pulled apart and annihilated – but there is no drama, instead it’s all so
matter of fact, mundane even. It surprises us perhaps with its utter banality.
‘Mistress Death’
stealthily sashays onto the starlit walkway, lithe, alluring, and deadly. She
is mesmerising, a siren to lure us, an exotic beauty arriving with promises of
heaven but it’s all smoke and mirrors. Inside beats a heart as black, or
perhaps blacker, as the deepest regions of the limitless abyss. There is no
light – just death.
Dreams
of a Mad Titan works because for the most part it’s
deceptively positive. It initially offers us a vision of a comfortable
cotton-wool swaddling heaven-like state of bliss, but then it gradually
degenerates into a gangrenous black rot thereby revealing itself as a trap,
luring us moth-like and willingly to our destruction. However much we complain,
however, this has always been the way of the universe – it is neutral and doles
out creation and annihilation equally, whether deserving or otherwise.
Available through
Bandcamp here:
Acclimate website:
Psymon Marshall 2019.
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