Hypnagogue - Eon

Album: Eon

Artist: Hypnagogue

Label: Nailed Nazarene Industries

Catalogue no: N/A

Tracklist:

     1.      Convulsed

     2.      Shadespace

Eon is the latest experimental/abstract ambient offering from Nicholas Medone from Italy's Hypnagogue, and this constitutes my first encounter with the project, and it certainly won’t be my last. The two side-length tracks delve into hellish, darkly esoteric soundscapes using nothing more than taking the familiar and transposing them into something less comfortable and identifiable, shifting the narrow contexts normally associated with them, and creating wholly alien and claustrophobic, airless vistas. In particular, Eon rinses such familiarity in the raging waters of filth and contamination, to produce a set of compositions that are unsettling, harrowing, and teeth-grindingly unnerving without going down the route of exaggeration and bluster.

‘Convulsed’ is a loop of crackling pops burning against a backdrop of a faint metallic ringing. This isn’t a cosy picture of people congregated around a campfire, however: instead that faintly alarming background ringing does nothing to reassure you, raising the hairs on the back of your neck. There’s a subtle industrial feel to this, an oiled and well-greased mechanical malice that permeates every nook and cranny, a smell of blooded steel and iron accompanied by the stink of death. Perhaps this is the aftermath of ruthless and mechanised massacre and bloodshed, and perhaps that crackling is an orchestra of funeral pyres, singing of ash and scorched bone, incinerated hopes, and the smouldering remains of hubris. Columns of black smoke rise up into an empty, greyly ashen, cloud-filled sky, where not even carrion birds are present.

And now, on ‘Shadespace’, the skies have opened and the blackened, acidulated deluge pours down in torrents, an attempt perhaps to wash away the sins and scars of the battle. A mournful drone accompanies the rain, a lament perhaps for the dead, for what’s left behind, and for a future that’s been forever lost. Blood and ash run in rivulets, the smoky remains of the pyres are dampened, and the soil is enriched from the vain attempts of blood and flesh to stand against the forces of industrialised warfare. It’s as if nature itself is weeping.

It’s an art to take what are essentially two basic streams of sound, one strand of which is familiar, normal, and commonplace, and the other an artificial counterpoint, that in combination manage to invest the results with such power and a deeply dread, malign atmosphere. Both tracks are subliminally oppressive: it’s only when you really dive into and recognise the richness on offer here that you understand the darkness and decadence it represents. Both can be classified as warnings and laments – a warning that this could be our estate if we’re not careful and a lament for the fact that we’ve allowed it get this far in the first place. This says far more to me than any number of protest songs, or grimy, granular noise blasts ever could. Its sparseness is what elevates it above the formulaic, and consequently it delivers a frisson of dismay and horror all the more emphatic. There’s a rare talent at work here, at least in the opinion of this reviewer. Eon seeped into my consciousness far more than I imagined it would and, given the chaos of the present, opened up some not too pleasant scenarios. For those who love their experimentation and abstraction tinted in thoroughly nihilistic hues.

Available as a digital download from here:

https://nailednazareneindustries.bandcamp.com/album/eon

Psymon Marshall 2019. 

Moloch Conspiracy - Baclou.

Album: Baclou

Artist: Moloch Conspiracy

Label: Eighth Tower Records

Catalogue no: ETR020

Tracklist:

1. Iridescent Lights

2. Bagne’s Nightmares

3. Fever

4. Baclou

5. In the Forest

6. Intermede

7. Signals

8. Fire in the Night

Baclou is a creature from French Guianese culture, also known as a Viscous Gnome (no, that isn’t a typo). Julien Lacroix, the light behind this project, spent some time in French Guiana and, judging from the snippet of information on Eighth Tower Records’ Bandcamp page for the release, the visit was a mixture of heaven and hell (mostly the latter, by the sounds of it). The general tone on this one is heavily oppressive, a weighty, thick miasma of murkiness and half-light swirling in an obscuring swampiness. It also feels uncomfortable: if Dante had been a dark ambient musician, then I have very little doubt his Inferno would have sounded something close to the opus Lacroix has given us here.

Like all cultures anywhere in the world, it possesses its bright spots in addition to its underbelly of dimly-lit practises and traditions, its beautiful stretches of untouched landscape and its desecrated fields and hills. The first track (‘Iridescent Lights’) does offer a small presentiment of both sides of the place: a light dusting of ringing, jingling bells float into view before a darkly shivering drone and bird sounds interlope, the layers massing in weight and concatenating into frenzied strings, pushing forward and retreating constantly, flying high and then diving back into the depths. Drones and bells compete for space, intertwining and twisting, leaping and swooping, until it achieves a shrill pealing before falling back.

Bleak squalls, accompanied by heavy downpours characterise ‘Bagne’s Nightmare’, the winds demolishing trees and buildings in their wake. This one paints a miserable picture, a flooded landscape awash with debris human and natural, broken and blackened. The atmosphere is oppressive and inhuman, a heaviness that pushes everything and everyone to their limits, taunting endurance, mocking our perseverance. In an environment such as this, biological systems fail and falter, and I am not just talking of the human body – the landscape suffers as well. Heat shimmers resound on ‘Fever’, drying out the thin skin of the soil, blackening, shrivelling, and breaking apart, disrupting the mechanisms needed to survive and prosper. 

‘Baclou’ is a murky, viscous affair, exactly as the mythical creature this album is named after is described, an elusive but potent and dangerous entity to be encountered at one’s peril. It eyes us with malefic intent, a glowering consciousness that means us no good. Heavy exhalations, growls, low metallic reverberations acting as a warning: the indicators are all there, and we should heed them. ‘In the Forest’: normally it would be a place of deeply calming spaces, but here the trees and flora of the understorey press inward, blotting out as much light as it can, leaving in its stead a dim veil as if the canopy has been covered in gauze. In this half-light, the mind wanders, small sounds are magnified, and the shadowed crevices become deeper and darker, hiding who knows what? The forest has eyes, and their owners’ intentions are as mysterious and unknowable as the creatures are themselves. Yet ‘Intermede’ shows its other side, a busy, chattering, noisy cacophony, an island full of life and activity as mesmerising, chaotic, and kaleidoscopically colourful as any paradise.

Distant sweeping drones open ‘Signals’, heralding a return to the undergrowth, a place of scuttling beasties and clandestine perils. Darkness appears to collect here, as if it’s hiding from the light higher up. Perhaps bright illumination is a reminder of its inhabitants’ true natures, an ugliness that by rights should remain hidden. Grainy crackling introduces the final track, overlaid with a single drum and reverberations, an age-old quimbois or voodoo ritual performed in the dead of night on some lonely beach, or deep within the forest, the trees sheltering the secrets laid bare in the celebratory arena. It’s as opaque and inscrutable as attempting to see the heart of a jungle by standing on its outside. 

Baclou speaks mostly of the sides of cultures and locations that the travel brochures would never dare to show and could never be shown in brilliantly airbrushed colour – the senses-sapping heat, the inhospitable and unforgiving climate and landscape, the fauna and flora inimical to humans, the capricious whims of weather and nature, the occult streams of culture kept away from prying eyes. It feels uninviting almost, a warning to stay away, or perhaps it’s a way of telling us to leave it alone to exist as it always has done and not to interfere. The canvas we’re shown here is depicted in muted and subdued hues, with only the occasional pinprick of light showing through – those sparse stars are indicative of life and activity but beyond that hint it doesn’t enlighten any further. 

Let me just reiterate by concluding that this is a dark dark ambient album, a recording where any kind of illumination is in short supply. It’s heavy, oppressive, limiting, depressing, and overbearing: needless to say I loved it.   

Psymon Marshall 2019. 

Michael Bonaventure - In Tenebris Ratione Organi

Album: In Tenebris Ratione Organi

Artist: Michael Bonaventure

Label: Eighth Tower Records

Catalogue no: N/A

Tracklist:

     1.      In Tenebris Ratione Organi I

     2.      Galactic Weed

     3.      Morphodelic

     4.      Giant Silver

     5.      In Tenebris Ratione Organi II

     6.      Distant Madrigal

     7.      Love Transformed

     8.      Giant Gold

     9.      Doom Animal

Normally, when settling down to write a review, I only cursorily skim through the press/artist blurb that always comes with the recording, as I like to listen and react to the music unfiltered so I am not influenced by outside ideas; as a result I don’t often quote from the accompanying spiel but I will make an exception in this case because a very good point is made: “The organ: in popular association, both the ‘God Instrument’ and the ‘Devil Instrument’, a purveyor of myriad densities and shades of massed tone, elemental fire and inexhaustible air, capable of inspiring wonder, awe, profound mystery and sinister darkness”. Up until this moment I’ve never really thought about the organ’s associations but yes, certainly in cinematic terms the organ is portrayed as being representative of forces both divine and satanic. A good case occurred to me: in Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls (1962), a scene occurs when Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss), who has been hired as a church organist, is seen practising the organ in her new church but the elevating hymnal music shifts to something less wholesome as time goes on. The minister, hearing it, decides that she’s no longer a suitable occupant of the position, and asks her to resign. Here we encounter both sides of the organ in a single instance.

The current offering under consideration, Michael Bonaventure’s In Tenebris Ratione Organi, is built around the complexities and manifold capabilities of the organ as the facilitator for an almost endless spectrum of possibilities. In many respects, and as pointed out in the blurb, it can be treated as a form of synthesiser, in that sounds and waveforms can be layered together to produce hybrid tones. And the end result of Bonaventure’s explorations fully underscores the pre-eminence of this majestic instrument as a means of expressing moods and atmospheres every bit as effortlessly as a digital synthesiser can.

And my word, the myriad ‘voices’ and textures presented here have opened my eyes to the spectacular breadth of tonal and abstract articulation that the instrument is capable of. In all honesty, my sole impression of the organ has been limited either to the sort of musical accompaniment to grand classical compositions or cheesy seaside entertainment of a certain period (so much for a broad appreciation of music!), but this goes beyond the boundaries of conventional interpretation and expression. This work places the grand organ in an entirely new context, an exemplary instance of a catalyst that helps to shift one’s perspective from the mundane to the fantastic.

I suppose in many ways Bonaventure uses the organ as any musician would employ a synthesiser, creating base sounds and then subjecting them to treatments and manipulations, in real time and post-production, to add nuances and colour to what is already a rich seam of material. Watching a cathedral organist manipulate the stops is exactly akin to how a synthesist would adjust and control the frequencies of the electronic instrument. In exactly the same manner he can add and subtract, alter and multiply the textural make up, creating a complex tapestry of sounds and vibrations to bedazzle the listener.

I have to say, with hand on heart, that this is a difficult album to describe in verbal terms and the most challenging review I’ve had to write (which is a good thing), but the pieces on here run the gamut of atmospheres and feelings from the elevating (‘Love Transformed’, ‘In Tenebris Ratione Organi II’) to the disturbing, sinister, and disjointed (‘In Tenebris Ratione Organi I’), via the fractured (‘Morphodelic’), abstract (‘Doom Animal’), and ambient (‘Giant Gold’), as well as the mysterious and the majestic (‘Distant Madrigal’). There’s everything you would expect from a full pipe organ, albeit some of the sounds have been pulled, elongated, cut-up, mashed, distorted, and put through further effects. Add on voices and a plethora of other artificial noises to create new flavours, textures, and colours, just like a chef would do to a dish, and what you get is an aural smorgasbord of delicious and adventurous sonic experiments that will enlighten and surprise.

For me, this has been a mini-revelation, in that the organ is an instrument I’ve not really paid much attention to in the past, and consequently Bonaventure’s pieces, by using an entirely fresh palette from which to conjure up new visions and vistas, have turned my perceptions upside-down. In a world where it seems that most people are content to tread well-worn trails it’s nice to meet someone whose ethos appears to be ‘what happens if I do this?’ – and that I find to be extremely refreshing and welcome.

The album, in a limited edition of 100 CD copies, is now available to pre-order here:

https://eighthtowerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/in-tenebris-ratione-organi

Psymon Marshall 2019

Sonologyst - Phantoms

Album: Phantoms

Artist: Sonologyst

Label: Unexplained Sounds Group

Catalogue no: USG054

Tracklist: 

1. Phantoms

2. Three Options Collided

3. Shamanic Rite Passing on a Table Equipped with Azzax and Trumpet

4. Memorex

5. Dahomey Kingdom

6. Fragments of a Winter with a few Other Cards to Play

7. An Index of Maths Philosophy

8. Codified

9. North-South Crossing

10. Orient Out of Tune

At this moment, there appears to be a lot of great experimental material emerging from Italy, and Sonologyst is no exception. Furthermore, whilst this is undoubtedly firmly in the ambient camp it’s also fair to say that it defies being put into any particular slot within the broad spectrum of ambient styles. There are elements of the dark, occult, ritual, isolationist, and industrial subcategories of the genre, but it’s all mixed together with such craft, skill, and attention to detail that it all melds together into one seamless whole. 

Above all, this is a discourse on the truly alien – using modes of sound and expression that are at once familiar and yet dissonant in some bizarre way. Noises that we hear every day, the constant soundtrack to our daily lives, form the substrates of these ten slices of ghostly surrealistic mirages, fleeting and illusory: voices, machines, natural environments, wailings, screeches, scrapings, and some eluding description. They’re the aural equivalent of fleeting memories flashing stroboscopically on the inner screen, or perhaps a series of hallucinatory snapshots of a distorted hypnogogic dream in disrupted time: before we’ve even had a chance to grasp their significance they’ve already dissolved and segued into something else. 

The beauty of this album is that it refuses to stay still, with sounds and images tumbling over one another in a rush of creation and instantiation. It’s as if this is the point at which everything came into being, with the ghosts of all that was, is, and will be suddenly blooming in one grand gesture, a singularity of focused ideation, an etheric collection of blueprints stamped with potential. It’s a flowering of overflowing chaos, a madhouse of colour, form, and shape, all exploding at once in an act of endless imagination. It’s all here – darkness, light, good, evil, bright, dull, natural and supernatural. In just the same way that we humans are microcosmic reflections of the macrocosmos, so too is this album – it’s a reflection of the all in the singularity, and the singularity in all. 

For people who want quality ambient that defies easy pigeonholing, that’s both uplifting and yet threaded through with hints of the darkly bizarre underbelly of existence, the plane where very few of us venture to explore. Also for those who, like me, ‘see’ music through images rather than as just sounds. A good place to find yourself, I think. 

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.