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. 

Trepanerungsritualen - Konung Dómaldr Vid Upsala Hängd

Album: Konung Dómaldr Vid Upsala Hängd (Expanded & Remastered)

Artist: Trepanerungsritualen

Label: Neuropa Records

Catalogue no: NRP67

Tracklist: 

1. Ur Oðinns Sidosår

2. För Svears Väl

3. Blodregn

4. Den Fallne Dómaldrs Lik

5. Elivágar

Descend with me to the unutterably subterranean depths of the Hadean underworld that is the music (and mind) of Trepanerungsritualen, in my opinion one of the most truly original projects to have emerged from the industrial scene in the last decade or so. While there are many outfits to which such descriptors as doomy, dark, diabolical, or unhallowed would apply, in this instance Thomas Ekelund’s darkly oppositional project to his Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words encapsulates the very essences and definitions of these epithets. 

Konung Dómaldr Vid Upsala Hängd (Expanded & Remastered) is just that – an expanded and remastered (by Frederic Arbour of Cyclic Law fame) version of a recording originally released in 2013 on US label Merzbild as a limited edition cassette EP and subsequently in extended 12” form on In Solace Publishing two years later. This new edition features, two new tracks, ‘Ur Oðinns Sidosår’ and ‘Elivágar’ (previously only available on obscure compilations), which brings it up to something like album length. 

Immediately we find ourselves drifting down the Stygian waters through dank tunnels in the opening track, floating to a hellish destination populated by howling nightmares and bellowing horrors. A single accursed bell announces our arrival into this baleful region, signalling eternal torment and endless spiritual darkness, if not actual darkness. This is Sheol, filled not with the agonised screams of the damned, but instead with the oppressive weight of bitterness, dissatisfaction, grief, and remorse. Eternal torment here means a dead immortality of regret, of the heavy blanket of knowledge of a wasted life, and the twisting snakes of guilt.

The original EP’s opening track, ‘För Svears Väl’, tips us into a subterrestrial chasm inhabited by diabolical creations while a guttural voice utters curses and growls against a background of a reverberating drum. ‘Blodregn’ creaks into view, a misshapen creature wheezing arthritically and stalking a desolate corpse-littered plain buffeted by black winds with the shades of soul-devouring birds free-wheeling above. It segues straight into the following track (‘Den Fallne Dómaldrs Lik’) but now the wolves are circling, attracted by the heady aroma of spilt blood. Distantly, buried deep in the background, can just be heard the sounds of industry, belching smoke and bile, poisoning the air, ground, and anything living. Deep snarls waft over our heads, borne by those sulphurous currents, spitting gangrenous death and necrotising disease. Light, as dim and yellowed as it is, flies away to hide itself from the sights – it has no place here, no use or purpose. It is ashamed of, and laments for, its failure.

‘Elivágar’ gusts into existence, with blasts of wind even colder than you thought possible – this is the Hell of legend and myth, the place of suffering, of everlasting self-torment, and eternal self–reproach. There are no flames, no hellfire, and no brimstone, however – the torture and punishment is self-administered, and we’re here not because of the sins we’ve committed but for our sins of omission. We created this place – and for that reason we are forever imprisoned by its walls. It is a place of suffering, a self-defined one, and we haven’t been delegated here by some spiritual deity, but by our own selves. Its desolation is total, its bleakness unrelenting, its ruins blackened by our stink.

An immensely articulate and eloquent travelogue describing the lowermost regions of the hells we fashion for ourselves. Not only that, for me it’s also an indictment of the human condition: as a collective we appear to naturally gravitate towards the dark and unwholesome, but perhaps that’s because it contains more than a measure of the self-knowledge that we require to rise above it. Simplified, we must know the depths in order to appreciate the heights. Light cannot exist without darkness. And, if you’re looking for a champion who’s willing to delineate and articulate the profundities of the ineffably subterranean, then Trepanerungsritualen is that prophet.  

Psymon Marshall 2019.

Neraterræ - The Substance of Perception

Album: The Substance of Perception

Artist: Neraterræ

Label: Cyclic Law

Catalogue no: 138^th Cycle

Tracklist:

     1.      Shadows of Regret (featuring Northaunt)

     2.      To Reveal the Unseen (featuring Alexey Tegin from Phurpa)

     3.      Becoming the Nightmare (featuring New Risen Throne and Treha Sektori)

     4.      The Wicked Pulse of Conscience (featuring Taphephobia and Infinexhuma)

     5.      The Which Shall not be Witnessed (featuring Xerxes the Dark and Treha Sektori)

     6.      Beyond (featuring Ugasanie)

     7.      Echoing Scars (featuring Flowers for Bodysnatchers)

This is album is from Italy’s Neraterræ aka Alessio Antoni, and not only has it grabbed a good chunk of very well-respected label Cyclic Law’s real-estate for the project’s debut but also take a look at that list of collaborators – some of the finest exponents of dark ambient have gathered to Antoni’s cause and produced something rather special. This is the equivalent of someone writing their first movie script and then getting a phone call from Guillermo Del Toro saying he wants to direct it and that Industrial Light & Magic have offered to do the effects.

And what a debut – packed full of haunting, mist-laden, and deeply chthonic atmospherics, snatched out of buried time and lost places. This is at once as light as the white clouds flitting through cold alpine skies and as heavy as the weight of the accumulated aeons since creation. It is simultaneously uplifting and terrifying, bringing us close to both salvation and damnation in the same instant, feeding our fears and offering us hope. It is both fleeting and timeless.

The first few bars of track one proclaim that this is not your ordinary debut album – melancholic bell-tones hang as if suspended in air, like the ghostly shades of things best left unremembered. And yet, in spite of the power inherent in regrets these are nothing more than will-o’the-wisps, dancing brightly but inevitably proving to be insubstantial and ultimately ephemeral. Regrets only have power over us if we allow them to. Next comes ‘To Reveal the Unseen’, a piece shrouded in both distance and mystery. Profound subterranean winds and whispers vibrate through layers of mind, calling upon ancient and antediluvian powers long dormant.

‘Becoming the Nightmare’ comes from a place deeper still, where forces and twisted intelligences beyond our imagining and conception bide their time in secret hollows, waiting with infinite patience for the time when the stars, in their vast aeons of infinitesimal movements, assume the right alignments and conjunctions. Until then, the tides are against them, and their actions are restrained and constrained. There will, however, come a time when the hairless apes will learn their true place, and the sad fact that they’ve been foisting grand delusions upon themselves in their hubris.

‘The Wicked Pulse of Conscience’ rings long and plangently through the caverns of mind, the threads of guilt and worry firmly attached to every fibre of our beings, guiding us, steering us, perhaps limiting us. It hangs heavily, a sometimes suffocatingly dark velvet drape, a veritable weight that appears at times to possess sapience and intention, pulling us back from the brink. Perhaps it’s attempting to prevent us from seeing ‘That Which Shall not be Witnessed’, a moaning wind blowing through chasms and eroded valleys strewn with rocks and obstacles. We’re not the only sojourner here: something chitters and scrapes, scouring the barren ground for whatever slim pickings there are.

The following track, ‘Beyond’, drones its way into our senses, before wafting just above our heads on unseen breezes, accompanied by staccato chirpings and cawings which do nothing to reassure us. Perhaps we haven’t yet reached the exit to the valley of the previous track, but already the landscape is changing, becoming broader, and less encumbered. Chiming winds whistle down from the heights, a keening voice beckoning us forward and out, and leading us into… what?

‘Echoing Scars’ answers the question: slow breaths precede a mournful piano figure, which climbs into a clear blue sky, while strange atonalities and drones interject themselves here and there. The vista has opened up, giving us a less obscure view, bright but alien, familiar yet still incomprehensible, comforting but still defying logic. The reality here is dichotomous, but in spite of the dissonance it’s still calming and reassuring. It’s the perfect bookend to what started with ‘Shadows of Regret’ – an unshackling of burdens, and a freeing of conscience.

For a debut album it’s an exceedingly accomplished effort, expertly crafting a whole spectrum of moods, atmospheres, and aesthetics. This work possesses maturity, plus a confidence that only points to even better and more assured work from Neraterræ in the future. If this quality of vision is kept up with each subsequent release, then this project’s name will be assuredly be added to the hallowed firmament of dark ambient greats in the years to come.

Startling and wonderful.

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

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. 

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.

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. 

Winterblood - Finsternis

Album: Finsternis

Artist: Winterblood

Label: Self-released

Catalogue no: N/A

Tracklist:

     1.      Finsternis (Chapter 1)

     2.      Finsternis (Chapter 2)

     3.      Finsternis (Chapter 3)

     4.      Finsternis (Chapter 4)

Once in a while, a dark ambient project comes along that ticks all the right boxes, and Winterblood manage to do so several million times over. All I know about Winterblood could be written on the back of a postage stamp – the man behind these deep, cold atmospherics is an Italian by the name of Stefano Senesi. He describes his sounds as Polar Ambient and his stated aim is “to put the listener - after a reassuring prelude - into a cold state of loss and confusion; this makes [causes] an awakening...”…

I caught this project through the Waldeinkamseit I – III album, released in 2017, on Bandcamp via a Facebook group, and which is now due for a re-release on vinyl. The sheer frigidity and deep resonances contained on that album struck me in a way as if I’d been transported to somewhere at the southern extremes of Earth, a place where an icy voice whispers softly and beguilingly as you lose all sense of being and the warmth that is life. It’s a picture of isolation in possibly the most extreme sense of the word. Finsternis, the most current release (May 2019), elicits a similar evocation of loneliness and separation but this time transfers it to the centres of deeply and unimaginably ancient forests. Think such places are warmer and safer? By day perhaps – but come nightfall and those very same woods become places of unsettling unknowns; who knows what creatures and things lurk within its recesses, or what those bizarre noises are – are they human, animal, or something else?

It is commonly acknowledged that certain places, specifically natural places, accumulate what could be called a confluence of ‘spiritual’ or ‘magical’ energies – this is why we have sacred groves, or sites like Stonehenge and Glastonbury. These are generally thought of as benign in nature, so equally there must be other places where negative energies collect (a particular example that springs to mind is Japan’s Aokigahara, the ‘suicide forest’, on the northwestern flank of Mount Fuji). One can easily imagine malign energies aggregating in such places, accumulating blackly depressing and affecting atmospheres. What if, perhaps, the most ancient forests harbour a resentment of the fact that humans have distanced themselves from the roots of their own creation and sustenance?

What we have here are four mid-length tracks of repetitive brooding loops, simultaneously airy and yet oppressive. The deeper into the trees we go and the closer we get to the forest’s slumbering blackened heart, and the more the trees huddle together and blot out the light, the more keenly we feel the overwhelmingly bleak and stifling antagonism emanating from our surroundings. But it’s apparent that we aren’t alone – just on the edges of our vision we see shapes flitting between the trunks, but are they real or imagined? Perhaps they’re the hapless shades of those who came here before us, drawn in by the majesty and power of these places. The trees watch us balefully, resenting every step we take, animosity flowing like a shimmering tide against those who no longer acknowledge or seek their wisdom. Simultaneously, it’s the sound of an antediluvian Pied Piper, mesmerising us with sweet promises only to lure us down sinister paths into darkness where we’ll meet who knows what?

A contradictory album in some ways, as noted above: it is both airy and oppressive. Light wafts of uplifting chords swell magnificently to greet us, but lurking just beneath the surface are those hints of something darker at work. And that artful repetition: it becomes a burden after it’s been carried for a while, and only becomes heavier. Furthermore, in reality these four pieces never really begin or end – they’ve always been in existence, waiting for the receptive to catch their mournful refrains. And that cover image by British painter, illustrator, and author Walford Graham Robertson (1866 – 1948) – nothing could encapsulate the hidden occult power of ancient woodland better than this starkly monochrome illustration.

If nothing else, Finsternis reminds us that these wonders have existed for perhaps longer than civilisation has been around, and that should we ultimately disappear they’ll outlast us. The Earth was theirs to begin with, and more than likely it’ll be theirs once again.

Psymon Marshall 2019. 

Akoustik Timbre Frekuency - Thee Dreamachine Sessions.

Album: Thee Dreamachine Sessions

Artist: Akoustik Timbre Frekuency

Label: Sombre Soniks

Catalogue no: N/A

Youtube Videos.

Tracklist: 

1. Soundtraks for Thee Dreamachine 01

2. Soundtraks for Thee Dreamachine 02

3. Soundtraks for Thee Dreamachine 03

4. Soundtraks for Thee Dreamachine 04

5. Soundtraks for Thee Dreamachine 05

6. Soundtraks for Thee Dreamachine 06

7. The Dreamachine Sessions (Mix)

Ritual has always been around but, rather than being static, it’s an ever-evolving practise, even if its basis remains firmly embedded in the past. Brion Gysin added to the paraphernalia of ritual by creating the Dreamachine in the heady days of psychic and hallucinogenic experimentation way back in the optimistic (and mystic) sixties. Roundabout 1961 Gysin collaborated with Ian Somerville, a mathematician and computer scientist at Oxford University, and together they created the device. A description of the ‘machine’ and it effects are outside the scope of the present review, but information is plentiful on the web for the intrepid and curious.

The six tracks elucidated on here accompany a series of six short films on the device itself and Brion Gysin, its progenitor, plus an hour long mix which is to be used in conjunction with the Dreamachine. Akoustik Timbre Frekuency here rely on very traditional ritualistic sounds – bells, cymbals, singing bowls, flutes, harking back to the very roots of ritualistic practise. In addition field recordings have been thrown into the mix, creating a sensory dissonance as it enable us to see the world in a different light. Without the context of the films however it is difficult place the pieces into some kind of framework that makes sense. But, taking it purely as an academic exercise, and taking the hour-long mix as a reviewing cue, I will be concentrating my focus on that track so I can present some kind of an overview. 

The aim of ritual, of course, is to release us from the physical and mental constraints of our mundane reality and call forth atavistic entities and manifest spiritual archetypes into being. It’s no exaggeration to say that what we’re presented with here not only achieves that, but practically throws us out of the normal and into the supernormal. And that’s just the music – if we wish to use the Dreamachine alongside it undoubtedly its effects will be more completely felt. Clearly, the limbic system, responsible in part for emotion, learning, and memory, is meant to be aroused and activated together with the excitation of our visual faculties, without or without the visual cues afforded by Gysin and Somerville’s device.

It’s actually quite remarkable the effect such stripped-back and ‘primitive’ music can have on the mind, its otherworldliness a passport to entry into a realm normally off-limits and hidden away from our senses. Also its ringing clarity clears the mind of all humdrum thoughts and images, propelling us into a dimension where everyday preoccupations play no part. Knowing this, and performed whilst meditating on the steadily flickering rhythms of the Dreamachine’s light pulses, access to the visual part of our brains (to say nothing of the deeply buried ancestral memories each of us carries within us) the efficacy of the machine can only be multiplied in manifold directions. 

Saying that, having a Dreamachine isn’t compulsory – this is music to help us reconnect with ourselves, or at least those parts of ourselves that have been inhumed by the detritus of the world we live in. Listening to this, the psychic traveller can leave this dimension behind, bending time, place, and being at will. Sit back, turn the lights off, and simply let the sounds of time immemorial seep into every nook and cranny of your body. Your mind, once attuned, will do the rest. More than that, it will refresh one’s soul. 

Psymon Marshall 2019.

Various - Modern Bön 1 - Puraka

Album: Modern Bön 1 - Puraka

Artist: Various

Label: Modern Bön (Inhalation)

Catalogue no: N/A

Tracklist:

     1.      Visions – Emanate

     2.      Leftina Osha – Perverse is Normal

     3.      Good Luck in Death – On the Night of, We Spoke in Empty Whispers

     4.      Uruk – “Munkh Khukh Tengri”

     5.      Naresh Ran – Rehte Evil

     6.      Saahiya – Kuberekwa

     7.      ContemplaTRON – Böö

     8.      Izumi Yamamoto & Andy Hafner – Rhizom

     9.      Dead Space Chamber Music – Siren Chant

    10.  Eye Spirit – Fragile X

    11.  Thisquietarmy – Toujours ce rappel de l’éphémère

Compilation albums can be the devil’s own arse to review, if only because of the fact that in a short(ish) review one can only give a brief overview of the delights on offer. This particular release is based around a concept, that of a modern interpretation of the ancient Tibetan folk religion of Bön, whose origins lie in a mix of shamanism, animism, and ancestor worship. Indeed, one could say that this record’s heart lies deep within the Himalayan mountain fastnesses – the secret core of Bön being as mysterious and inaccessible as the Tibetan plateau itself.

This overarching concept on this, the first of four volumes delineating the stages of ritual and belief (Puraka [Inhalation], Kumbhaka [Contemplation], Rechaka [Exhalation], and Nirvana [Eternal Grace]) may suggest a plethora of ritualistic bells, gongs, thighbone trumpets, and throat-singing aplenty here but, while there are indeed some aspects of stereotypical uninitiated Western ideas contained within, what we actually get are moods and atmospherics infested with the spirit of the old ways, and the interpretations are as varied as the people who participated in this project. It’s about reaching back and reconnecting with those who have gone before us, the ones who laid the foundations so to speak, and those whose voices are still able to teach us wisdom. This is no different to those people in the West who are endeavouring to return to pre-Christian belief systems in order to realign themselves with their ancestors, and to rectify what adherents see as the imbalance of today’s world.

There’s no doubt that every piece here conjures up images of dimly-lit, smoky temples standing precipitously on the very top of vertical pinnacles of rock amidst the snowbound Himalayan peaks. The essence of the ancient past as well as the people, spirits and devils that inhabit it, are a constant thread running through every one of these tracks. And that, to me, is what this album is about: those deep lines connecting the present and the future to the past, and reminding us that the past is important, and that it can still teach us a lot.

Standouts for me are Vision’s swirling opener ‘Emanate’, Good Luck in Death’s mysterious ‘On the Night of, We Spoke in Empty Whispers’, the lilting and uplifting drone of ‘Siren Chant’ by Dead Space Chamber Music (great name!), the equally drone-worthy and ghostly ‘Fragile X’ of Eye Spirit, and Thisquietarmy’s gloriously blissful drone-fuzz tsunami of ‘Toujours ce rappel de l’éphémère’ (Always this Reminder of the Ephemeral). These are just the ones that connected with me on a level deep within – all are worthy in their own ways (although, to be honest, I didn’t get on with Izumi Yamamoto & Andy Hafner’s jazz inflections on their contribution ‘Rhizom’, but that’s purely a personal thing and no reflection on them).

If you’re looking for some deeply soulful drone, packed with some depth and dimension, then as an introduction to these artists this is as good a place to start as anything you could want. Available (alongside Volume 2 – look out for review soon) via Bandcamp only at:

https://modernbon.bandcamp.com/album/modern-b-n-v-a-i-puraka

Psymon Marshall 2019