Album: Distorted Ambience
Artist: RAZORRHEAD
Label: Self-released
Catalogue no: N/A
Tracklist:
1. Forbidden
Skies
2. In
Depths
3. Dense
Uplifting
4. Interinsection
5. Begotten
6. Detached
from Family
7. Into
the Abyss
8. Magma
9. I/You
Am/Are Nothing
10. Not
at Peace
It’s not often I my first
impressions are proven wrong, but this debut album of RAZORRHEAD managed to do just
that, with reservations. I have to admit being fooled by the two opening
tracks, which threw me completely for a loop (see below). But what followed was
a series of expositions of dark moods and shadowy atmospherics, but then, the
whole suite was inspired by the works of Polish artist Zdzadislav Beksinski,
and so that really shouldn’t come as any surprise. For those who don’t know,
Beksinski was a dystopian realist painter, his works depicting surreal
landscapes, architecture, and distortions of the human body, delineating a
nightmarish future that appears to have been mutated by some kind of nuclear
disaster. It would be too easy to compare his oeuvre to HR Giger: whilst there are some stylistic similarities there’s a huge chasm between methods of
expression – Beksinski’s work is more human and on less of a cyclopean scale.
Let’s start at the
beginning with ‘Forbidden Skies’, which introduces itself with heavy masses of
horn-like sounds, before a trippy beat carrying a piano figure comes in and
sends it loping along. Thick black smoke belches out of gargantuan factories,
whose structures appear to be made out of a conglomeration of human bones.
Shadowy figures, heavily wrapped up against the effluvia of pollution swirling
at ground level, furtively flit from doorway to doorway, as if to avoid being
seen. ‘In Depths’ comes next, which instantly put me in mind of Muslimgauze and
his eastern-inflected output – strong rhythms and Arabian-style musical phrases
that are indeed reminiscent of the late Bryn Jones’ work.
But, for me at least, the
real meat of the album begins with ‘Dense Uplifting’, a transitional piece that
possesses a much more freeform and experimental flavour that wends its way
through ambient and dark ambient territories while still retaining some
connections to beat-driven sensibilities. However, the following track,
‘Interinsection’, while still borrowing
cues from rhythm-based material goes full bore into moody soundscapes evoking
feelings of claustrophobia and stifling airlessness, of subterranean passages
dripping with foetid water and who knows what else, of dungeons stinking of the
waste of human lives and bitter recrimination. An air of miasmic, dank
unhealthiness pervades every strain and every note on this, the spaces
seemingly filled with shattered bones and rotting flesh. Strange unholy
creatures appear to have made their homes here, but whether the remnants of
human lives were created by them or at the dictate of human cruelty is open to
conjecture. ‘Begotten’ strays into drone/symphonic ambient country, a place of
vast cyclopean edifices defying the human scale, their towers and spires
reaching up to disappear into the cloud-filled skies. These monoliths of
ossified bone somehow seem sentient, their window apertures like eyeless
sockets that nevertheless display awareness, a cancerous stare that cuts
through flesh and bone and lays bare all the inner thoughts and workings of the
individual mind. Wrap your cloak around you tighter and hurry on, lest the
towers’ gazes linger on you for too long.
‘Detached from Family’ is
like a slow-motion helicopter, oscillating and pulsing in an altogether
unsavoury manner, the chittering of some monstrous relic from a bygone age. Its
motivations are malefic and horrendous, its beady eye a cold, calculating, and
inhuman orb possessed of a carnivorous intent. It is no more cognisant of you
and your vaunted intelligence than you are of an ant crossing your path. ‘Into
the Abyss’ is a bottomless pit from which vile sulphurous emanations pour, a
dark void that contains all and nothing. It’s the breath of Hades, the stench
of the dead, and the heartbeat of antilife. Its sole purpose is to strip the
soul and senses of those who aren’t prepared or seasoned for the trip below its
threshold – it’s the ultimate test of the aspirant to knowledge and spiritual
immortality, and only those who have trained themselves to withstand its rigors
(and for some, not even then) are likely to survive the ordeal.
‘Magma’ opens out with
slow, pulsing drones, a ponderous outflow of hot, poisonous liquids, the blood
of earth, and the devastator of everything it comes into contact with in its
path, burning and scorching. It has the power to engulf and submerge, burying
and erasing. Parts of this somehow reminded me of mid-period Tangerine Dream,
certainly in particular parts, but that could just be a fancy of my mind.
On now to the last two
pieces, beginning with ‘I/You Am/Are Nothing’ which I think is my least
favourite track on here, being a tad too mainstream in tone and style for my
liking. Syncopated, bouncy sequencing, samples, singing, and spoken word
vocals, it really didn’t do anything for me. I think its inclusion here is
misplaced, but that’s just my personal feeling – it didn’t really feel in
context with the rest until its second half when harshly burbling drones took
over and annihilated what had gone before. Finally, we have ‘Not at Peace’,
which starts with a granular blast and overblown feedback, underwater distorted
noise, a repeating piano eventually superseding all accompanied by voice
wailings.
Whether the pieces on
display here actually reflect Beksinski’s work is for others to decide, as
although I am familiar with his work I am not au fait enough with it to the extent that I can comment with
confidence. I have reviewed the music on its own merits, plus using the context
of what little I know of the Polish artist’s work I’ve come across. In some
ways it explores the limits of what can be described as dark ambient,
elasticising and bending the boundaries of that genre to just about accommodate
themselves within them. Generally speaking the experiment is a success, with
the exception of one or two examples, but as a piece of abstract exploration
and response to another artist’s work I can say that it has served its purpose
well. For what it’s worth I enjoyed this with the one exception, but that is
solely a personal thing as I mentioned. For those with a mind to explore
boundaries and the bending of genre borders then I’d say go for it.
Get the download via
Bandcamp from here:
Also available through Spotify,
iTunes, Amazon, Deezer, and iHeartRadio
Psymon Marshall 2019.
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