Album: Collisions
Artist: AŁŦUM
Label: Self-released
Catalogue no: N/A
Tracklist:
1. Frozen
Sky
2. Deliverance
3. Lament
4. The
Last March
Altum is a UK act, based
in London, and that’s all I know. In fact that’s all I need to know, because if this four-track sophomore album is
anything to go by, then whoever the artist is behind this project has already
developed a keen ear for creating dark and sinister atmospherics, and I shall
be watching for future releases of his with interest. More than that, I think
that he deserves a wider audience for his drone, dark ambient essays in dank,
icy, and frigid sonic canvases.
‘Frozen Sky’ begins with
scratchy, hissy static granulation before bass drones loom in, a sky canopied
with heavy black clouds, flitting and scudding rapidly, forever coiling and
twisting. The sun has hidden itself away, and whatever light filters through is
dim and diffused, planting shadows and misshapen silhouettes across a blighted
landscape. It is here where the fearful imagination conjures up visions,
threatening and malign, ready to ensnare and devour. In the half-light,
indistinct shapes and shadows take on malevolent and perverse lives of their
own, baring teeth and claws. This is no place for delicate souls.
The second track,
‘Deliverance’, begs the question deliverance from what? A heartbeat, echoing
though some dark subterranean chamber, provides a backdrop for guttural breathiness,
and sparse instrumentation, as if we only have one small light to observe
whatever it is (if anything at all) that resides beneath the layers of rock and
soil above us, and so we get only get an incomplete picture. As the track
progresses the malignity increases, as the brain fits together the piecemeal
images and the fevered, heightened imagination stitches a perhaps fanciful
picture of what’s down here with us.
Hollow drones, with bass
threads underlying them, weave a melancholy tale on ‘Lament’, a Stygian elegy
of the netherworld, a spiritual dungeon of the lost, wicked, hopeless, and
irredeemable. The bass frequencies overshadow all, piling up a stifling and
airlessly oppressive blanket of depression and despair, instilling a darkness
that is almost total; occasionally a faint glint of light, or of movement, is
apparent, but it’s never enough for us to make sense of what it is. Black winds
and vapours swirl damply, reeking of death, decay, and degeneracy. Noxious
fumes, exhalations emanating from suppurating wounds cut deep into the very
fabric of the deathscape, cling to sloughing skin and torn rags. A bell tolls
far in the distance, but whether it’s mourning for all those consigned here, or
a call to gather more souls, is hard to discern.
Perhaps that tolling was actually
a signal for a final gathering of the diseased and damned, a sign that ‘The
Last Match’ is about to begin its long, endless journey. Mournful winds
carrying the dust of sinful aeons upon its currents, scours and abrades both
flesh and thought, the marchers trudging through infinite wastes blacker than
the blackest night. There are no stars here to guide the way, no torches able
to penetrate the thick veils of impenetrable dark. It is only instinct and
imperative, or directions from some unseen source, which drives them onward. It
is neither the journey nor the destination that matters: it is simply the act,
as purposeless as it is.
This is quite the ride, a
trip to the deepest pit of an underworld that goes beyond human imagination, a
journey to the event horizon of a void that not only stares back at you but
also shows you the sum of all fears and magnifies them infinitely. It spares
you any graphic depictions, but gives you enough clues and hints so that your
own worst enemy at times like this, your imagination, evokes all manner of
cancerous and pestilential visions. This isn’t a place the soul can withstand
for long, at least the human part of it; perhaps the immortal aspect has the
strength to endure, but even that’s in question. A welcome, and deep,
introduction to the nihilistic, apocalyptic nightmare that is the Hadean abode
of Altum.
Available as a digital
download via Bandcamp:
Psymon Marshall 2019.
No comments:
Post a Comment