Album: Ritual of the Aurora Noir EP
Artist: Sysselmann
Label: Winter-Light
Catalogue no: WIN 025
Tracklist:
1. Ritual
of the Aurora Noir
2. MS
Nordlysnatt
3. The
Long Wait (Memorial Mix)
4. First
Winter Light
I make no secret of the
fact that I have long been fascinated by the northern regions of this world of
ours. If there is indeed such a thing as a soul, then mine is irresistibly
drawn to the septentrional, those areas where snow and ice blanket the land,
and for long periods of the year the sun is absent. I put it down to the fact
that I was born in 1963, when the UK had one of the worst winters on record
with drifts up to six feet in some areas – it’s a fanciful reason I know, but
I’d still like to think that it did have some bearing on my love of the
Scandinavian countries, and Iceland.
Be that as it may, as
beautiful and stunning as we deem the colder regions, it also has its darker
side, and that not all is as picture postcard perfect. Sysselmann’s third
release (and his first for Winter-Light) draws moody portraits of the ice-bound
(well, not so much these days sadly) head and tail of our planet, ranging from
the ineffable to the darkly unsettling. When you’re subjected to complete
darkness for long stretches of the year, raging blizzards, and sub-sub-zero
temperatures, neither the Arctic nor Antarctica will be featured in your local
travel agent’s holiday brochures anytime soon.
The title track announces
the onset of the dark season, a deep drone settling heavily into the atmosphere
and the wailings of wind-driven squalls bringing with it blasts of deeply
freezing air. The absence of light, broken only by the sharp clarity of the
star-studded vista arching above one’s head, only goes to intensify the cold,
seemingly concentrating it into tiny needle-sharp spears driving unremittingly
into the body in spite of layers of thermal clothing. Caught out unprepared,
the only consolation you’re likely to get from this is that your last view of
life will be the dancing aurora waving serenely in the sky while you lie stretched
out on snow awaiting death.
‘MS Nordlysnatt’, which
roughly translated means something along the lines of MS Northern Lights Night,
breaks upon the consciousness with a wash of glacial waters, crackling and
crepitating until a species of calm descends with quiet string-like drones. If
we look up, the sky is alive with waves of light being blown by unseen winds, a
celestial light-show performing to music too rarefied for us to hear. To
witness such a wondrous natural phenomenon is to make contact with the numinous
and transcendent, as if the sky and earth are communing and the dancing
curtains are acting as a bridge between the material and the heavenly. Who
knows what spirits and entities are travelling those empyrean paths, and their
purpose in doing so: are they welcoming new spirits, or are they visiting those
still trapped on the material plane?
Is the ‘Long Wait’ of the
third track the stretch of time between the dimming of the light and its
resurgence months later? One imagines the slow, multiple rotations of the stars
between ‘twilight’ and ‘dawn’ here: I see a time-lapse sequence in which the
stars wheel in their assigned paths while wispy, insubstantial clouds flash past
on their way to warmer climes perhaps. The stars are permanent while the clouds
are ephemeral, with the land they pass over somewhere in between – appearing to
be here forever because of the short span of time on this planet, but
inevitably disappearing in cataclysm many billions of years hence. ‘First
Winter Light’ is the herald of the new dawn, the end of the reign of night, and
the welcome return of the sun. Life, as sparse as it is here, awakens once
more, emerging sleepily to greet the much-missed golden orb of light. It’s an
unhurried process, the purpling and blueing of the horizon nothing more than a
sliver at first, until the light breaks free of the shackles of night’s
imprisonment, and it bursts forth to claim its rightful hegemony for the time
being.
A closely studied and
observed musical characterisation of the remotest and least accessible parts of
the world, where life and nature is governed more heavily by the seasons than
most other parts of the world (perhaps dominated would be a better word in this
context). A part that is less understood, second only in mysteriousness to the
deeps of the oceans. It describes and accentuates its various moods and
landscapes, and our aesthetic responses to them. Perhaps this is why I truly
connect with the ‘soul’ of the northern lands – it’s that ultimate mystery,
fenced off from the rest of the world unless you have the means to visit it,
covered in darkness physical and metaphysical, and bathed in legend and lore.
To that end, I think Sysselmann’s reflections on these places successfully
mirror those very aspects, delineating the beauty, the danger, and the utter
serenity with precise brushstrokes.
Available as a CD in a
4-panel digipak in an edition of 200, and a digital download from the link
below:
Psymon Marshall 2019.
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