Album: Eon
Artist: Hypnagogue
Label: Nailed Nazarene Industries
Catalogue no: N/A
Tracklist:
1. Convulsed
2. Shadespace
Eon
is the latest experimental/abstract ambient offering from Nicholas Medone from Italy's Hypnagogue, and this constitutes my first encounter with the project, and it
certainly won’t be my last. The two side-length tracks delve into hellish, darkly
esoteric soundscapes using nothing more than taking the familiar and
transposing them into something less comfortable and identifiable, shifting the
narrow contexts normally associated with them, and creating wholly alien and
claustrophobic, airless vistas. In particular, Eon rinses such familiarity in the raging waters of filth and
contamination, to produce a set of compositions that are unsettling, harrowing,
and teeth-grindingly unnerving without going down the route of exaggeration and
bluster.
‘Convulsed’ is a loop of
crackling pops burning against a backdrop of a faint metallic ringing. This
isn’t a cosy picture of people congregated around a campfire, however: instead that
faintly alarming background ringing does nothing to reassure you, raising the
hairs on the back of your neck. There’s a subtle industrial feel to this, an
oiled and well-greased mechanical malice that permeates every nook and cranny, a
smell of blooded steel and iron accompanied by the stink of death. Perhaps this
is the aftermath of ruthless and mechanised massacre and bloodshed, and perhaps
that crackling is an orchestra of funeral pyres, singing of ash and scorched
bone, incinerated hopes, and the smouldering remains of hubris. Columns of
black smoke rise up into an empty, greyly ashen, cloud-filled sky, where not
even carrion birds are present.
And now, on ‘Shadespace’,
the skies have opened and the blackened, acidulated deluge pours down in
torrents, an attempt perhaps to wash away the sins and scars of the battle. A
mournful drone accompanies the rain, a lament perhaps for the dead, for what’s
left behind, and for a future that’s been forever lost. Blood and ash run in
rivulets, the smoky remains of the pyres are dampened, and the soil is enriched
from the vain attempts of blood and flesh to stand against the forces of
industrialised warfare. It’s as if nature itself is weeping.
It’s an art to take what
are essentially two basic streams of sound, one strand of which is familiar,
normal, and commonplace, and the other an artificial counterpoint, that in
combination manage to invest the results with such power and a deeply dread,
malign atmosphere. Both tracks are subliminally oppressive: it’s only when you
really dive into and recognise the richness on offer here that you understand the
darkness and decadence it represents. Both can be classified as warnings and
laments – a warning that this could be our estate if we’re not careful and a lament
for the fact that we’ve allowed it get this far in the first place. This says
far more to me than any number of protest songs, or grimy, granular noise
blasts ever could. Its sparseness is what elevates it above the formulaic, and
consequently it delivers a frisson of
dismay and horror all the more emphatic. There’s a rare talent at work here, at
least in the opinion of this reviewer. Eon
seeped into my consciousness far more than I imagined it would and, given the
chaos of the present, opened up some not too pleasant scenarios. For those who
love their experimentation and abstraction tinted in thoroughly nihilistic
hues.
Available as a digital
download from here:
Psymon Marshall 2019.
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