Monocube & Troum - Contemplator Caeli.

Album: Contemplator Caeli

Artist: Monocube & Troum

Label: Transgredient Records (Drone Records)

Catalogue no: TR-14

Tracklist:

     1.      Circularis et Perpetua

     2.      Processio Aequinoctiorum

     3.      Stellae Errantis

     4.      Digressio

What is one to do when two favourite artists join forces? Troum, a project whose work I’ve had a penchant for since I discovered them about a decade ago through my work for another review site, collaborate on this four-track album with a recent discovery of mine, Monocube (my review of their Substratum can be found elsewhere on this blog). And this joint project looks outward, into the vast spaces above our heads, to seek the numinous and fundamental in the stars, and connect with the celestial spirit that moves the universe.

This concept goes to the heart Contemplator Caeli, which is Latin for ‘Look [to the] air’ or, in modern parlance, ‘Look to the skies’. The ancients believed that all wisdom, of things natural and supernatural, was contained in the celestial wonders of the night sky, wherein harmony ruled and everything was perfection. It’s an expansive concept, and these two projects follow suit with some graceful, uplifting, and soaring music. ‘Circularis et Perpetua’ establishes the manifesto by freeing our minds from gravity and sending us swooping and swirling amongst the endless flows of time and space. Wisdom and knowledge have no beginning or end, and both stretch from alpha to omega in a never-ending process of discovery, reception, acceptance, and then eventual replacement with new knowledge.

The mournful sawed strings, set against a cavernous backdrop, of ‘Processio Aequinoctorium’ is an instructional warning that in order to move forward we must demolish the old certainties and embrace new knowledge. As sentient beings we are not static, physically or mentally, and that our relationship with the universe around us and the wisdom it contains is in constant flux. To remain standing still is to rot and decay, and our continuing evolution depends on us reaching ever forwards into the future.

The following track, ‘Stellae Errantis’, confronts us with the majesty of the universe itself. The ancients often assigned meanings to both individual stars and to groupings of stars, because to them they contained valuable information and lessons for us mortals. Here, a raspy susurration blows our astral mind vehicles as if we were wandering stars ourselves, guiding us on our journey of knowledge-gathering. And out of that seeming chaos of random information comes order and stability, harmony and connection, as the quiet power of ‘Digressio’ underscores. Herein it leads us to the notion that, in spite of its immensity and vast potential, there is an underlying quality that keeps it all together and stops it from disintegrating. What that quality may be is up to us as individuals to perceive, but be assured it exists, as intangible to the physical senses as it is. One thing we can be all sure of – it is bright, beautiful, dark, and dangerous. Just as these four tracks are. 

Psymon Marshall 2019.

Neomortoria - Death Portraits

Neomortoria – Death Portraits. Self Released – Bandcamp – 2019.

https://neomortoria.bandcamp.com/releases

Tracklist:

     1.    Death Portraits.

     2.    Rituals.

     3.    Confessions.

     4.    The Mirror.

     5.    The Cannibal.

     6.    The Body.

     7.    Body Collapse.

Neomortoria is the new half Italian/half English Death Industrial/Power Electronics project of Martyn Reid (Depletion) and Cristian Usai (Suture). Death Portraits is their debut album, presently free to download off their Bandcamp and it’s been released today.

I’m taken in straight away by the huge pulsating drones of the Synths coupled with a higher synth frequency that haunts the narrative that plays out, like a voice from the edge. Each track that has vocals that function like a report. What I call 'Death Synths' radiate and infect the disturbed vocal, this is then coupled with distortion that corrodes the track, breaking it up. I like the use of creepy atmospherics that occur throughout the album; the huge resonating drones, build impressive instrumental passages. Samples work in the place of coherent vocals, moaning sounds dance around samples, sharper noise and drones form a whole unit that shifts and moves as if circulating and eventually strangling itself out.  Tracks such as The Cannibal incorporate guitar, taking an equally haunted yet different approach, the vocal here is more inhuman than before. Some tracks really drag as if to become torturous, intensifying and making for a more effective experience. Lyrics are short and frequently repeated for effect.

Overall, I am impressed by this horrible recording, I feel it has a deliberate Italian feel to it and that sets a certain mood. Death Portraits consistently ensures each track is stripped back to economically use only the right sounds for each track, accurately setting the mood of each piece to make for a more convincing listening experience. This is a very strong beginning that is worthy of a physical release of which I’d gladly buy.

Choppy Noodles 2019.

Carmina Funebria - Ecce Mors.

Album: Ecce Mors

Artist: Carmina Funebria

Label: Putridarium

Catalogue no: N/A

Tracklist:

     1.      The Advent and the Triumph

     2.      The Consecration – Devotion

Trolling around on a site like Bandcamp can sometimes yield some obscure gems, just like this one from Carmina Funebria on Spain’s Putridarium label. A two-track limited edition cassette of just 50 copies, what we’re offered here is nigh-on thirty minutes of doomy, dark, funereal ambient, dredged up from the depths of the deepest parts of Hades.

This is wonderful stuff – truly atmospheric, drenched in darkness and stifling miasmatic airs, lightless, occult, coming from a place deep within where hope withered and died many aeons ago. This isn’t a place for the living – its only denizens the wandering, listless shades of the dead. Time is stretched to infinity, where a second becomes an eternity, and time has lost all meaning. Time spent here is a punishment in itself. ‘The Advent and the Triumph’ looms out of the Earth, black and shapeless, a harbinger of the coming doom, gongs ringing like mirages in some sunless, hot desert. It smothers and suffocates all in its path, crushing relentlessly, stifling and extinguishing light. The Black Behemoth is uncaring, unfeeling, blind, and pitiless.

‘The Consecration – Devotion’ is a call to the ancestors, a rite performed in some cavern far below the mass of beetling humanity scuttling on the face of the world. Distant voices only vaguely heard, bells as occasional punctuation, and subterranean winds bellowing from the dankest chasms. Is it a rite of supplication? Or of evocation, calling forth some loathsome creature? Or is it something darker, even more sinister? Are the celebrants even human? Perhaps this is some ritual that’s been performed ever since the world began, out of the sight and hearing of humanity? It’s all a deep, unfathomable mystery, perhaps only meant for those with the ears to hear, eyes to see, and the mind to comprehend.

If you like funereal doom with some heavily occult atmospherics, swathed in lightless dark, and drenched in overtones of death, then this is more than worth a try. Available as a digital download and also as a limited edition cassette of just 50 copies, housed in a silkscreened cardboard box – purchase from here:

https://putridarium.bandcamp.com/album/ecce-mors

Psymon Marshall 2019.