Album: The Outside
Artist: New Risen Throne
Label: Cyclic Law/Old Europa Café
Catalogue no: 133rd Cycle/OECD 276
Tracklist:
1. The
Outside (I): Sunrise
2. What
We have Seen
3. The
Outside (II): Facing the Void
4. Corrosion
of Pillars
5. The
Outside (II): Structure
6. The
Outside (IV): Bodies Float Silently
7. Birth
of a New Disciple (II)
8. A
Vision of the Hidden (Sysselmann Remix)
9. Echoes
from the Loss (Visions Remix)
10. Breath
of Growing Structures (Taphephobia Remix)
11. Humani Nihil
(Phantom Ship Remix)
12. Sad Silent
Prostration Before the Monolith (Vestigial Remix)
13. Sigh of the Soul
(Apocryphos Remix)
14. Signs of the
Approaching Wastefulness (II) (New Risen Throne Remix)
15. Withered Regions
(TeHÔM Remix)
New Risen Throne,
aka Gabriele Panci, has been a purveyor of some of the finest dark ambient
textures for a long while now, and this latest opus is a follow-up to 2011’s Loneliness of Hidden Structures (Cyclic
Law – 38th Cycle). As a quick glance at the tracklist will verify,
it comprises seven new tracks and a further eight remixes created by some of
the premier dark ambient acts working in the field today. As it’s such an epic
aural tome I shall curtail my waffling and get straight into it.
As with most of
NRT’s previous output, we are immediately beset with cold, dark, sweeping
atmospherics on ‘The Outside (I): Sunrise’, perhaps at the coldest point just
before the sun shows its face, yet ultimately one detects a streak of cosmic evanescence
swirling throughout its length. Weaving in amongst the dankness are voices,
ultimately overwhelmed by gargantuan tsunamis of oppressive, heavy drones. If I
were to place this in any kind of geographical context, albeit a spiritual one,
this would be Purgatory, a dimension suspended somewhere between the vaguely
enlightened and the absolute damned, a piece of otherworldly real estate
hovering between bright skies and an industrial wasteland of decay and filth,
leaning heavily towards the latter though. Perhaps this is what the title
refers to: a purgatorial realm where those on the outside are forever goaded
and taunted by visions of the heavenly, knowing that they will never reach
those heights. That is terrifying.
Next is ‘What We
have Seen’, a slowly-pulsing, stealthy miasmic cloud of suffocation, an
intangible and diffuse but sentient phenomenon that yet has a destabilising and
destructive effect, perhaps like the slow onset of plague, feeling out the
vulnerable and the doomed with its icy searching fingers. It starts off
quietly, almost imperceptibly but, by turns, it gains a solidity and deadly
weight that crushes both people and the light. A woman’s voice interrupts,
perhaps a supplication to whatever saviour she believes in, until resonant
tones like bells emerge out of the gloom – but what do they portend? Do they
bring the promise of being saved or the harbinger of inevitable death in the
wake of an immovable force? Choir-like voices only reinforce that notion,
giving way to a massive wave of orchestral-style drones that threaten to
subsume all before its onslaught. ‘The Outside (II): Facing the Void’ doesn’t
give us any respite, wailing tones and drones blowing coldly across a barren
landscape, that once was fertile and lush, yet now is nothing more than a paean
to desolation. The only things that grow here are diseased and misshapen,
perverted sculptures displayed in homage to a twisted vision of Nature. Not
even high-flying orchestral sweeps manage to dispel the oppressive stuffiness,
instead only suffusing the atmosphere with something monolithic and
indestructible, demonic even.
‘Corrosion of Pillars’,
track 4, is an exercise in lulling one into a false sense of security,
beginning as it does with plangent, almost soothing tones, before a breath-like
drone rips into the fabric of this reality wherever it may be located, dragging
with it darkness and infection. It’s seemingly anchored in a foetid solidity, a
slow-creeping flesh-rust, eating the body of materiality from the inside,
sundering its very cells and constituents, corrupting and necrotising. The next
track, ‘The Outside (III): Structure’, doesn’t pretend to offer us any shelter
either, a dank, claustrophobic dungeon dripping with stagnation and ichor,
replete with mysterious voicings echoing up from secret subterranean places. All
we can do here is to shiver against bare stone walls, and attempt to find
warmth and solace where we can. Almost as if closing a circle comes ‘The
Outside (IV): Bodies Float Silently’, the final iteration of the cycle (but not
the final track on CD1): the endpoint, when the ghost in the machine becomes a
literal machine, an engine of de-evolution that ultimately sends us (and the
world) back to a primitive state, or even to time of endless death. Light is
very much in short supply here, but not altogether extinguished – hiding in
some chasm somewhere, away from the clutches of darkness, biding its time for
the right conditions for it to re-emerge. The hints are there, albeit extremely
faint.
To round off CD1
we have ‘Birth of a New Disciple (II)’, a track suffused with occult meanings
and invested with a deep spirituality, even if it is itself wrapped in a kind
of darkness as if to hide itself from the world. It soars and sweeps,
occasionally creating sparks and clashing bolts of power and light, swooping to
the ground only to veer upwards at the last moment. It is power personified,
self-contained and confident in itself, knowing that it has ultimate control,
and that its boundaries are limitless. Its worshippers know that too, and seek
propitiation and appeasement, hoping to win its friendship in a bid for
survival.
I won’t dwell too
much on the remix disc as, although these tracks are ‘new’ in the sense of new
interpretations of selected pieces of NRT’s previous output, this is a bonus
adjunct to the new material. Nevertheless, I think they deserve a little time
to be listened to and appraised.
Norway’s
Sysselmann (Thomas Narverud) gives ‘A Vision of the Hidden’ even more of a
sense of the occult streams behind everyday appearances, injecting some cosmic
expansiveness into proceedings. Frédèric Arbour’s Visions project reinvents
‘Echoes from the Loss’ and transforms it into something etheric and deeply
seismic. Taphephobia (Ketil Søraker) takes on ‘Breath of Growing Structures’
and reimagines and reshapes it into something uplifting, poetic, and
mesmerising, a call from the depths of time, space, and dimension – a
soundtrack perhaps to accompany the cooling of the universe and the subsequent
coalescence of all matter into familiarity. Definitely a highlight.
Roberto Faloci,
aka Phantom Ship, drags ‘Humani Nihil’ into the deep realms of some bottomless
ocean, where it appears there are wonders to behold. Droning chords swirl
effervescently, light appears to dance even at these watery depths, and colours
and alien shapes cavort in profusion. This one is another highlight, and left
me with a smile on my face. Vestigial’s reinterpretation of ‘Sad Silent
Prostration before the Monolith’ is subterranean, burrowing deep into the
strata of earth to reach the primordial chasms and caverns below our feet.
Rumbling drones do a magnificent job of stirring the lizard brain right here.
‘Sigh of the Soul’, remixed by Apocryphon, delves even deeper if it’s possible,
assailing us with deep bass drones that appear to echo endlessly around the
bowels of the earth. Whatever lives down here wishes to remain there, and to be
left alone.
No we’re on the
home straight with the last two tracks. First is ‘Signs of the Approaching
Wastefulness (II)’ remixed by New Risen Throne himself, and what we’re treated
to is a masterful essay in creating disturbing, unsettling atmospheres, without
resorting to overwhelming noise or drone. A barely audible distorted voice,
placed against scratchings and disembodied noises, plus the occasional swelling
and strategically-placed drone, are enough to create a vivid picture. Many
would do well to study this. Finally, TeHÔM take the honours of rounding the
set off, with ‘Withered Regions’. A lone bell, treated and distorted,
accompanies a male voice, a ritual being enacted in some dark and secret place
that isn’t anchored in any particular time or place, a sourceless Everywhere
that somehow pervades all of existence but yet is not part of it. This is an
incantation to manifest isolation, separation, distance, and ultimately,
detachment from all that is material and earthy.
It seems highly
appropriate that I am currently reviewing this whilst much of the world is in
lockdown to guard against a contagion: although where I am people are still
free to go wherever and to mingle with whomever they please, this album somehow
gives a foretaste of a deserted world, where the streets are empty, and the
human voice and spirit has been stilled. It almost seems as if this album and
its release form a kind of focal point, a nexus, wherein all the fears and
hopes of mankind have converged. Perhaps it’s even a tad prophetic – even if it
ultimately isn’t, it’s a magnificent album. Was it worth waiting nine years
for? That’s for you to decide, but it’s arrived at a very propitious moment.
Available as a
2xCD in an edition of 500 in an 8-panel digipak and as a digital stream from
here:
https://cycliclaw.bandcamp.com/album/the-outside
https://cycliclaw.bandcamp.com/album/the-outside
And also from the
Cyclic Law and Old Europa Cafè websites:
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