Album: Cromelech
Artist: Babalith
Label: Sombre Soniks
Catalogue no: SomSon126
Tracklist:
1. Consecration
2. The
Black River
3. Shadows
in the Moon
4. The
Frost Daughter
5. Peacock
of the Dark
6. Jewel
of the Black Circle
7. The
Hyena of the Sorcerer
8. Rattle
of the Stars
9. The
Scarlet Queen
10. The
Veil of the Witch
11. Spectres
in the Vines
12. Wolves
Beyond
13. Dwellers
under Water
14. The
Altar and the Golden Skull
15. The
Garden of Eons
16. The
Idol of Time
17. The
Valley of the Ape
18. Blue
Serpent
19. Apparition
of the Cross
20. The
Spell of the Oaks
21. Haunted
Horse
22. The
Shadow of the Eagle
23. The
Shadow of the Beast
24. Chromelech
25. Outro
Let’s start this review
with something not completely irrelevant, only mostly so: originating from
Wales, the word cromlech is quite familiar to me – it denotes a type of
megalithic tomb, consisting of one very large flat roof stone held up by
smaller uprights. I am not entirely sure whether this selection of
shamanic/ritualistic pieces has any connection to megalithic tombs, but in the
abstract I am guessing that there is
a line connecting the age of stone monuments and the 25 short pieces of music
presented here. As I’ve argued elsewhere, shamanisn/animism (one of the first
belief systems that evolved) was an essential ingredient in the spiritual lives
of the people that lived thousands of years ago, as it was a way of keeping the
lines of familial and tribal connections open and living.
And what we get is, in
many respects, a collision between the ancient and modern – field recordings,
tribal percussion, voices, and synthesised sounds. The artists involved, André
Consciênscia and Eunice Correia, admit that these are crude recordings, but I
don’t think that’s a negative in this case: the essence of shamanic ritual is
to strip away the layers pertaining to this
world and all its unrefined materiality until the celebrant attains access to
the purer ‘otherworld’ of spiritual existence. One can easily envision the
proceedings: no modern paraphernalia, just a couple of skyclad participants,
accompanied by primitive instrumentation, enacting the mysteries of initiation
around ancient stones put up by people whose names are unknown but whose
intentions are clear nevertheless. The rhythmic drums, gyrations, chanting, and
ecstatic howling are deliberately engineered to open up the pathways between
those ancient lives and the ones we live today.
Electronic ambient
atmospherics are often interjected around the (very) basic structures of many
the songs, and for the most part the integration is highly successful,
injecting layers of depth and substance which only add to the enigmatic ritualistic
aspect, as well as hinting at those elements of the immaterial that cannot be
seen but only felt. Like I said, this approach does reap dividends, although
one or two of the pieces I felt disturbed the equilibrium somewhat through the
use of synths and organs (I am thinking in particular of ‘The Frost Daughter’
and ‘The Scarlet Queen’) – they threw me out of the overall feel of this album
and I felt they were a bit of an intrusion, feeling more like soundtrack
compositions than stripped back shamanic conjurations. The rest of the pieces
revolve around a much more tribalistic and dare I say ‘primitive’ core, the
beating heart as it were of the sacrosanct nature of the ceremonies being
performed.
There are moments when
it’s about as sparse and threadbare of unnecessary adornments as it’s possible
to be. And that, I think, is a powerful thing – in an age when music appears to
be overproduced, over-layered, and overfilled, this is the species of
composition which practically begs us to reconnect with and to be aware of the
world around us. We’re plunged into a world where even the minutest sound
contains and signifies meaning, sounds that delineate an existence that we’ve
allowed ourselves to become divorced from. What’s more, these pieces also allow
us to physically feel the reawakened
links forged by ritual – our skin feels the winds that once blew through the
hair of the tomb, mound, and sacred site builders, our bare feet the very
ground upon which priests and priestesses trod when celebrating their own
mysteries of life, birth, rebirth, and death. After all, a properly observed
ritual should bestow insight and unalloyed clarity of vision and mind.
Allow yourself to sink
into the milieu of the ancient peoples that once roamed the green land and join
with the shamans of the 21st century in reinvesting and repairing
our denuded landscape with the lines that infused the entire spectrum of
material existence with power. Those ancient tribespeople not only knew about
that power’s presence but also felt it – perhaps it’s time for us to do so
again.
Psymon Marshall 2019
