Album: The Seventh Continent
Label: Self-released
Catalogue no: N/A
Tracklist:
1. Glaciers
and Antarctic Mountain Ridges
2. A
Shipwreck by Polar Lights
3. Sheltered
in a Frozen Cave
4. Drifting
Icebergs by Nightfall
5. White
Horizon, Black Waters
Hiemal appears to be
quite a prolific gentleman, Bandcamp listing 53 releases of his, two of which
came out this month (August 2019). I recently reviewed Shoreline Inertia, the first of those releases, and now along comes
a second, The Seventh Continent. The
term seventh continent is a real thing, referring to Antarctica – indeed Hiemal
states that the inspirations for this five-tracker are the Endurance (1914 – Ernest Shackleton) and Terra Nova (1910–1913 – Robert Falcon Scott) expeditions to that
continent at the bottom of the world, which is probably one of the most
inhospitable places on the planet. And the one thing that truly emerges from
this THREE hour album (apart from its brilliant value for money - just €5!) is just
how microscopic we humans are in comparison to the magnitude of this last
continent.
Opening proceedings is forty-six
minute long ‘Glaciers and Antarctic Mountain Ridges’, a freezingly cold blast
of frigid air, over which Sir Ranulph Fiennes describes Scott the man and his
expedition in an interview (Fiennes himself is a noted explorer). That wintry
backdrop is a portent of the tragedy that played out later, the insignificant
human scale pitted against the immovable and implacable forces of nature native
to the continent. Winds pile upon winds, battering and demolishing, stifling
and pummelling relentlessly. And, having just introduced my new headphones to
the wonders of dark ambient, the bass frequencies are absolutely seismic,
physical entities in themselves, appearing able to move things just on their
own. One can easily imagine vast chunks of glacial ice cracking and moving,
fracturing off their parent walls of ice and plummeting into the seas. Seen in
this context, is it any wonder that failure and tragedy more often than not accompanied
those early expeditions?
Both sets of men were at
the mercy of the elements which they couldn’t do much to counteract. ‘A
Shipwreck by Polar Lights’, another 40+ minute epic, probably refers to the
Endurance expedition, led by Shackleton, the ship ultimately being crushed by
frozen sea-ice. Soaring flights of drones ride high above the ice-bound
continent and into the unnaturally clear air, the wonders of the heavens
twinkling unashamedly on the canvas of the night sky, the aurora shimmering and
shimmying, lifting its skirts and moving to the music of the spheres, patently
oblivious to the human drama unfolding below. The enchanting light-show, a marvellous
wonder for a little while, would have paled by the time the expedition crew
would have realised the situation they were in.
Then follows ‘Sheltered
in a Frozen Cave’ and here the battering of the wind and elements has abated
somewhat, at least for the time being, but it’s only warmer inside by a few
degrees. Outside, though, it’s still an icy maelstrom of obliterating gales and
white-out blizzards, a place where no unprepared human would last long. At
times like this, one cannot do anything more than ponder on the fragility of
existence: survival depends on so many factors, where an excess of one factor or
the lack of another can mean the difference between living and dying. There must
have been a point at which the crews of both ships would have wondered whether
they’d ever make it out alive.
‘Drifting Icebergs by
Nightfall’ must have presented a spectacular sight, floating mountains of ice
sailing majestically past by the light of the stars, soundlessly and
unstoppably, like ghostly ships. Stately high-flown washes and drones drift
serenely past, just like the monoliths of compacted ice themselves, the silent
waters carrying their bulk effortlessly and purposefully. And, finally, ‘White
Horizon, Black Waters’, another long and epic track, sets down in sound the
perfect summation of the continent and its immediate environs – vast open
spaces of unbroken white stretching from one horizon to the other, often
leading to snow-blindness where everything is covered in a disorientating
blanket of white. The seas around the continent are another world, a dark
wonderland that, like the rest of the world’s oceans, has yet to be fully
explored. No wonder that HP Lovecraft set one of his Mythos stories, ‘At the
Mountains of Madness’, on this continent.
The music on here, all
three hours of it, reflects Antarctica itself, with its sweeping drones and
heavy ambiences that appear to have no limits or end. In spite of the knowledge
we’ve gained about most of the world we call home, the southern landmass is
still a substantial mystery. The music here on The Seventh Continent carries with it a deep sense of the
unfathomable and indecipherable enigma that is Antarctica, a place where very
few have ever visited or are likely to visit. Above all, it delineates the
immensity of the riddle of ice-enclosed geography that sits at the southern
extreme, a puzzle that perhaps we might never solve. There are some who would
say it would be better left that way.
Available as a digital
download via Bandcamp on this link:
https://hiemalambient.bandcamp.com/album/the-seventh-continent
Psymon Marshall 2019.
