øjeRum - Without Blood the Sun Darkens.

Album: Without Blood the Sun Darkens

Artist: øjeRum

Label: Cyclic Law

Catalogue no: 135^th Cycle

Tracklist:

1.      Without Blood the Sun Darkens

øjeRum is Danish musician and collage artist Paw Grabowski, and on this release we’re presented with an hour-long track of sweeping cinematic ambient that’s highly melancholic, brooding, and inward-looking. It’s a soundtrack to loss and longing, a hymn to trying to capture something, a feeling or an emotion, that was experienced but fleetingly and has now faded into memory. It almost feels like the deep regrets held by someone dying, an immense sadness about a life wasted or a momentary decision that had life-long consequences: tears run down a face, eyes lifted to the shimmering stars, and a silent plea to perhaps turn back time.

There is no other phrase for this but hauntingly beautiful: a tad trite and unsatisfactory perhaps, but there are times when words are inadequate and fall short of a mark. Despite the deep wells of sadness evident on here, it is simultaneously uplifting and soaring. Think of a stunning landscape, seen under the blue, purple, and red sky of dusk, where day hasn’t yet succumbed to the blanket of night but stars are beginning to shyly peek out of the veil of blue, streetlights and lighted windows pinprick the last remaining silhouettes of earthbound geography, and everything takes on an air of mystery. Upon a hill somewhere, a lone and unknown musician plays a lament to how time takes all away from us in the end, how it is that only the living possess memory, and also that we shape and distort our remembrances of people and events.

In the end, no matter who we are, whether we were important or otherwise, we leave all behind, and the shape of our lives dissolves – and the further away in time the finer the particles of what we were become until they too disappear. øjeRum’s musical tapestry weaves all the emotions and feelings associated with things we wish we’d done or not done, and the resulting narrative drifts into the wide open spaces of the celestial aether. Perhaps it is only there that our memories exist, forever travelling between the stars, and becoming a part of the panoply of Creation.

Simply stunning.

Psymon Marshall, 2019. 

Ghoul-Kin - Seesar

Album: Ghoul-Kin

Artist: Seesar

Label: Sombre Soniks

Catalogue no: N/A

Tracklist:

1.      The Time-Travelling Ghoul-Kin
2.      The Hanging Witch
3.      The Evil-Looking Boy
4.      The Disappearance of 1926
5.      The Eve of the Battle of Sarkomand
6.      The Negotiations with King Randolph
7.      The Coronation of the Chieftain

Seesar is an American musician and sound creator, now transplanted to Shanghai, China, after having studied music in London, UK. He’s always been interested in the Lovecraftian Mythos as inspiration for cycles of musical composition, and Ghoul-Kin, his second release on Sombre Soniks, is based entirely around a single character: Richard Upton Pickman. The name is most associated with the tale ‘Pickman’s Model’ (1927), wherein the titular character is associated with ultra-realistic painted depictions of strange creatures, which Seesar here denotes as Ghoul-Kin. Over the course of the tale, Pickman himself becomes one of the Ghoul-Kin, and disappears to parts unknown. He is encountered again in ‘The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath’ (also 1927) in which he has been transformed into a ghoul, and on this recording Seesar constructs a narrative connecting the two tales. 

Seesar categorises his compositions as Lovecraftian Futurist, embracing as it does the concepts of the Lovecraft Mythos and the ideas of the Italian Futurists. The music itself is created via the use of unfamiliar instrumentation (such as bicycle tyres and spokes, suitcases, hairbrushes and combs, and a television wall mounting bracket), which has the effect of forcing us to think of sound in new ways as well as stripping away any specific cultural associations. The overall effect is to tip us into an alien landscape, where dissonance and consonance exist in a state of nervous tension, where positive and negative are practically one and the same quality.

But, as noted by the artist, it isn’t necessary to understand the academic underpinnings of the compositions to get something from them, or to find oneself enveloped by the atmospherics delineated here. The music is slippery, in the sense that the sounds employed are organically-structured even though there is intention behind every note. And if we tap into the mindscapes of Lovecraft’s Mythos stories, these dreamlike assemblages, disjointed and freeform as they may appear to be, do in fact make complete sense – after all our ordered world is adapted to the mental and physical view we have of our reality and so it must follow that the worlds Lovecraft envisioned are themselves fully adapted to the mental and physical frameworks of the creatures inhabiting them. Outsiders will find them disorientating and perhaps sickening.

Having noted that herein lie works which very much stray outside the bounds of what most would define as music, nevertheless it isn’t cacophonous, atonal, or dissonant. In fact the squeaks, scrapings, screechings, percussive elements, crackles, and strange voices coalesce into something which is strangely beautiful and beautifully strange. The moods essayed here have the same goals as those of dark ambient, or noise – they’re meant to take us out of ourselves, to transplant us out of the familiar and comfortable, to a reality whose components and guidelines differ vastly from our own.

Being conversant with most of Lovecraft’s work, I can say that the atmospheres described in his work have been captured very closely by the seven tracks put forth here. I’ve heard other musical interpretations of Lovecraftian aesthetics, mostly dark/cinematic ambient, which paint a picture of brooding malice and poison, but for me Lovecraft depicted the utter banality of the monstrous and uncaring neutrality of the ‘gods’ inhabiting his imagined universe – these ‘creatures’ neither cared about us nor noticed our presence, and they merely acted out their natures according to their kind. Viewed in this context then, these compositions contain a kind of aesthetic whose definition is neither good nor evil - it just is as it is. For me, that is truly Lovecraftian.

Psymon Marshall 2019. 

Inner Demons Records #1 - Foot and Mouth Disease - Forever Is Composed of Nows.

Foot and Mouth Disease – Foreveris Composed of Nows – 2x 3”cdr – Inner Demons Records – 2019.

https://www.facebook.com/Foot-and-Mouth-Disease-272250709456435/

Track list.

Disc 1.

     1.    Nows 2.

     2.    Nows 3.

     3.    Nows 4.

     4.    Nows 7.

     5.    Nows 5.

Disc 2.

     1.    Grand Jester 10.

     2.    The Smile 9.

     3.    The Smile 10.

     4.    Grand Jester 5.

     5.    Nows 1

This is the first of a series on Inner Demons reviews that I’m doing as they sent me an epic package of review stuff. The Florida based label specialises in experimental and noise on the 3” CDR format, sometimes in singles or doubles, sometimes in small box sets, since 2004. Inner Demons is run by Dan Fox who is behind the Loss, IF, Fail and Disconsolate projects.

Foot and Mouth Disease is a Rochester, New York project that has been releasing since around 1996. Foot and Mouth is Lawrence J. Patti, there have been a lot a lot of online and physical releases.

The first cd is made of 5 different ‘Nows’, I hadn’t done my research properly on the label and was expecting Walls of noise or similar; instead this is something entirely different. It starts as very atmospheric in haunted sense, drones and twangy electronics build Nows2. The second Now – Now 3 is more ambient with keyboard melodies floating around it, this is still haunted, but more sensual than the previous Nows. The Next Nows(4) is really fragile keyboards and pulsations, actually gorgeous relaxing synths and nice to listen to. Nows(7) is a noisier track, louder and projects a darker vibe that the previous works and this continues into the final Nows (5) with an edgier, more suspenseful ambience.

The second disc seems to dwell in the darker areas of the first one. Grand Jester 10 is similar to the suspenseful electronics of Nows 2, it has that bleak ambient background as various electronic drones take the lead, futuristically and effectively. Passages of beauty return to The Smile 9, yet the darkness of sound lurks and plays out. Choppy slight electronics play over the drones of The Smile 10, it’s done in a way that the sounds that punctuate the harmony form a fractured collage of sound. This becomes more cohesive as high frequency noise rises as the work unfolds. The darkness returns for Grand Jester 5, this is ominous and threatening, bleak drones dominate with slight teaks in tone causing menace. The resonance of strings and drones builds and ties everything together with Nows 1, leaving us with traces of the reoccurring beauty that is of Forever is Composed of Nows.

All these contrasts make for pleasing listen that was soothing and challenging at the same time. The sounds are very well varied yet tie together cohesively; nice to hear such a fresh approach. This has served as a brilliant introduction to Inner Demons and Foot and Mouth Disease.

Choppy Noodles 2019.

Winterblood - Waldeinkamseit I - III

Album: Waldeinkamseit I - III

Artist:  Winterblood

Label: Self-released

Catalogue no: N/A

Tracklist:

     1.      Waldeinkamseit I – Chapter 1

     2.      Waldeinkamseit I – Chapter 2

     3.      Waldeinkamseit II

     4.      Waldeinkamseit III

This is the album that introduced me to the Winterblood project, aka Italian musician Stefano Senesi. Although this particular release is now just over eighteen months old, its relevance here is that it is justly being re-released on vinyl – the original 2xC60 cassette in shell box has long sold out (although it is also available as a digital download). And what I can categorically say is that every damn second of this masterpiece deserves to receive the vinyl treatment.

What Winterblood gives us here is four side-long tracks of gentle, lush, slowly-evolving looping polar ambience. From the first few seconds of ‘Waldeinkamseit I – Chapter 1’ (and its continuation in ‘Chapter 2’) we know we’re in for a deeply affecting experience, the swelling drone resonances reminding me of an auroral display, the sifting curtains of light dancing sedately in time to a rhythm of its own. Melodic accents blink in and out, just like glimmering stars peering out from behind the undulating veils of greens and reds wafting across the heavens. Even now, its soothingly soft, lilting tones are helping me relax after a trying day.

This is the language of snowbound landscapes, frosted trees, frozen lakes, sharp, crisply clear air, and raging blizzards. Just like those in real life, these ambient dreamscapes portray a cleaner, purer vision, one where the only footsteps in otherwise virgin snow are one’s own, and that the only witness to the majesty surrounding you is one’s self. But make no mistake, that beauty can be deadly – the howling winds and blizzards of ‘‘Waldeinkamseit II’ are testament to how dangerous things can turn, yet even here there is promise of glittering secrets being uncovered in its aftermath. Through breaks in the obscuring sheets of snow falling we see hints of twinkling brightness, like shy eyes being seen briefly from behind the tree trunks of a wood at night. We know they’re there, but it’ll take a little patience on our part before their brilliance will be revealed.

And just as predicted, ‘Waldeinkamseit III’ heralds the new dawn: the blizzards have petered out, to be replaced by a renewed land, the snow having reshaped the topography overnight, and the light bounces off random snow crystals and icicles. A pale sun shines in a bleached blue sky and throughout the day shadows cast strange shapes, seemingly alive, and which flit from shade to shadowed depression in order to hide from the luminous orb that’s revealed their existences. There they’ll wait, brooding and cursing, until the sun disappears once more and night reigns.

For audiophiles, the vinyl iteration of this opus promises even more, with a depth of sound and layering that will be all the more apparent. Listening to this on headphones will be an experience in itself, and will surely reveal even more richness. From my perspective, you owe it to yourself to purchase this in whichever format you favour – this is a little treasure.

(Also, just take a look at that wonderful illustration on the album’s front cover. Just like the cover to Winterblood’s Finsternis which I reviewed recently, this is also by Walford Graham Robertson, and is entitled ‘The Coming of the Faerie Lady’)

Psymon Marshall 2019.