Blackcloudsummoner - Four Breaths

Blackcloudsummoner – Four Breaths – Download/CDr – 2020

https://blackcloudsummoner.bandcamp.com/

1. Ultraheaven Crawling Fortress.
2.  Indoor Nebula.
3. You, Me + the Rocks.
4. Old Painless.

Blackcloudsummoner is one of those obscure projects that I hit upon a while back, a friend mentioned the project in passing so I enquired and found out more and bought some releases. The work grabbed me immediately which led to me buying more and more albums. Live, there has been tours with Nacht und Nebel and Luxury Mollusc as well as many other performances around the UK. Part of the beauty of Blackcloudsummoner is its obscurity, this project is always somewhere in the background occurring and developing, it isn’t in any cliques, it isn’t shamelessly pushed around on the web, it just exists and finds you – that’s how I feel in regards to my discovery of this work.

The sound is unique, it has a certain quietness to it, there is real variance in the tracks as there is continual, varied, odd experimentation occurring throughout the release. There are some strong combinations with guitar noise (Steve Larder) with the drones which really builds up and resonated strongly. The gentler noise sounds are beautiful, and they too build up and really throb the speakers on occasions as if sparkling and glowing in the bright light.

In contrast, hostility does exist within parts of the sound, it isn’t all sparkling light. You, Me + the Rock is a key example of this, digital frequency abuse pulsates at me. The slightest rise in sound or break from the quiet spaciousness raises the intensity and can easily shift the mood of the work.There are crackles pops and antagonistic drones that resonate darkness – the dark/light contrast that exists in the sound is constant. 

Pulling back to the experimentation, I cannot work out how the tracks on Four Breaths tie together, there is so much going on as if a lot of work was carefully worked through and eventually selected. This is all strong work and its quirkiness is impressive. It does tie in together, I just cannot explain how, but I can’t explain a lot about this project and that is what has kept me coming back. This is a strong release.

Nevis Kretini 2020. 

Druhá Smrt - Incarnatium

Album: Incarnatium

Artist: Druhá Smrt

Label: Sombre Soniks

Catalogue no: SomSon129

Tracklist:

     1.      The Ground

     2.      The Event

     3.      In the Hoor Zone

     4.      Breakthrough

Anyone who is familiar with the output of the Sombre Soniks label knows that they specialise in musical explorations of a ritualistic and occult ambient nature, and that they’re mostly invocatory in expression – in other words, the focus is mainly on the ritual aspects. Czech outfit Druhá Smrt go beyond on this recording – creating a suite of cinematic ritual ambient, in the sense that this somehow goes beyond the phenomenological into something approaching a shared universal consciousness. This is the end result of the Great Work, the stripping away of gravity-bound material reality and ego, to reach the Ain, the state of consciousness before the ego/I intervenes and stains it.

To that end, the four pieces on here are made from a warp and weft of luxuriant layers, all of which intertwine in symmetrical and soaring harmony, never once touching the ground but instead inhabiting the clouds and the regions above. Up here, where the sky is clear and the air unsullied by the polluting effluent of mankind, boundaries do not exist and the paths between one and the stars are devoid of obstructions. ‘The Ground’ may be the starting point, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the earth we stand upon – ground in this case could mean the metaphysical and philosophical framework upon which the spiritual work is built. Once the foundations are erected, and all is in alignment, ‘The Event’ merely becomes a catalyst to set off the reactions needed to free the forces that will push us further.

‘In the Hoor Zone’ delineates the breaking of shackles, the renunciation of material imperfection, and the denying of gravity’s hold on the soul. But it’s also a prelude and a signpost, the depiction of a state less encumbered by crassness and banality. Rising chords and chiming bells presage a new beginning, an invitation to prepare for an act of final realisation and enlightenment. And ‘Breakthrough’, the concluding track, is the initiation into the Absolute, the ineffable union, the complete separation from what came before, both physically and temporally. From here on bliss is its own reward, and fulfilment has been attained.

Collectively, the four pieces plot the route of an inward journey, from base material to enlightenment, a straight line in effect from earth (Malkuth) to Union (Ain). Of course, the way is more complicated than that, but perhaps Incarnatium can be seen as the prototype of the spiritual being’s path, and a gazetteer of landmarks along the way. It’s both an invitation, and an encouragement, to participate. Let this guide you on your way.   

Psymon Marshall 2019. 

Comicide - Moral Improvement.

Comicide – Moral Improvement (Live 1984 CE) – Cassette/download – Self Released  - 2019.

Track list.

A - Star Club, Birmingham.

     1.    Bloodmeat.

     2.    Bruised Organon

     3.    Muscular Jesus

     4.    Hatehouse

B - Eve Hill, Afro Hill Caribbean Centre, Dudley.

     1.    Bloodmeat.

     2.    Bruised Organon.

     3.    Muscular Jesus.

     4.    Hatehouse.

Comicide was an early Stephen Ah Burroughs industrial/PE project, later projects were Head of David, FRAG and Tunnels of Ah. There were two members, the other being Erik Jurenovskis, who was also a member of Head of David. This set of two live recordings were both played supporting Con-Dom in different venues in the West Midlands in 1984. The instrumentation used was vocals, manipulated synth and guitar.

The Birmingham performance doesn’t have vocals, it’s all instrumental. The synths add a suspenseful, anxiety to the work, the riffing gives a uniqueness and seems to melt into the synth work due to its repetitiveness, becoming noise in the process. The intuition of the guitarwork seems to convey emotion and add a layer of complexity to the work. Part of me sees this recording as Lynch like, it wouldn’t be out of place in Eraserhead or any of his other early works. In other parts, I feel it could fit in the Bladeruner, due to the futuristic synths - there was something cinematic about Comicide’s work.. The synths do become punishing and massive at times, this is where the Power Electronics aspect of the recording is.

The Dudley gig is edgier, there is more of an Industrial urgency to the work and the addition of shouting vocals is an added layer of intensity to the works and adds a further Power Electronics dimension to things. This is evident as there seems to be more volume at work to the point where it distorts and warbles things more. There’s some choppy noise communication going on, ticks and twangs create hallucinatory atmospheres, the esoteric aspects of future works, particularly Tunnels of Ah is demonstrated in its infancy here. The vocals distort and become noise as if in another dimension. The guitar work is even stronger here, as if more intuitive to what’s going on with the resonating synths.

This is a good, interesting document of the times and what was happening on the Noise live circuit back then and it can be complimented by the Con-Dom tapes of live recordings from that time. This can be bought at: https://tunnelsofh.bandcamp.com/album/comicide-moral-improvement-live-1984ce

Choppy Noodles 2019.

Tunnels of Āh - Charnel Transmissions.

Album: Charnel Transmissions

Artist: Tunnels of Āh

Label: Cold Spring

Catalogue  no: CSR256CD

Tracklist:

  1        Homage to the Landfill Dogs

  2.      Stations of the Skin-Bag

  3.      Kosmiglot

  4.      Here is the Heap

  5.      Fissuring-Genesis-Great-Power

You know, I am utterly convinced that some musicians, Stephen Burroughs being one of them, must have access to some device that allows them to travel through the streams of time. Listening to this, the fourth album from this British project on Cold Spring Records, I got the feeling that it was a recording of our future from our future, or what’s left after our extinction. It’s desolate, wind-riven, cold, choked with dust and debris, and barren. These are the sounds that only a dead civilisation makes, where our only legacy are the eyeless chasms of what were once the windows and doors of high-rise skyscrapers, their rusting steel skeletons reaching up to a silent sky with rotting and rusted concrete skin still clinging on, and where the suffocating blanket of radiation we’ve laid over the world’s surface has bequeathed a semblance of distorted life to machines.

The world is dead and lifeless, but not silent. Here be the ghosts of a society that lost touch with what gave it life, and as a reward for sustaining us we gave it death. Hurricane winds barrelling through empty caverns, both artificial and natural, banshee howls (or lamentations, perhaps), the seismic rumblings of an enraged world, the grind of mechanical behemoths lording it over a decayed landscape, recordings of the spectral voices of the long dead talking from the past: disturbing enough elements in their own right when heard singly, but when combined paint a terrifying picture of what’s in store. There’s no optimism here, and any room for hope has shrunk to an infinitesimal singularity. There’s no light, no colour.

‘Stations of the Skin-Bag’ will serve as a prime example – a high-pitched howling, electronic yet somehow human, set against a grainy, glitchy, sawing backdrop, builds up steadily until it breaks into crackles and even more graininess. A male voice, distorted as if coming from underwater, emerges out of the darkness only to be replaced by that overarching howl and broken background noise. It’s a grief-stricken plea from a history that no one will ever know, and it can only sing its pain to the void.

A pessimistic, nihilist album: to be seen perhaps as a hymn to a future that hasn’t yet happened, but is almost inevitable. Maybe play this whilst wearing sackcloth and ashes, and indulging in a little bit of self-flagellation using your favourite studded cat-o-nine-tails.

Psymon Marshall 2019.