Atomine Elektrine - The Antikythera Mechanism.

Album: The Antikythera Mechanism

Artist: Atomine Elektrine

Label: Winter-Light

Catalogue no: N/A

Tracklist:

     1.      Arcturus Alpha Boo

     2.      Metonic Spiral

     3.      The Exeligmos Pointer

     4.      Time Dislocated in the Mechanism

     5.      Epicyclic Gearing

     6.      Fragment F

Atomine Elektrine is better known as Peter Andersson, also known as Raison D’etre, purveyor of industrial ambient soundtracks to the blasted wastelands of our future. As AE, however, he presents us with a deeper and more mysterious vision, an atmosphere which haunts the equally enigmatic Antikythera Mechanism itself. This artefact was found in the sea off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901, and has been identified as an analogue computer used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses, presumably for calendrical and astrological purposes (astronomy, as we understand it today, didn’t exist, and the prevailing belief was that the stars and movements of the planets held spiritual significance) as well as time-keeping. The mechanism has been studied extensively, and while there was a lot of debate concerning its purpose, but judging by what I’ve read the ‘computer’ theory has been generally accepted.

Even knowing that hasn’t dispelled the aura of mystery surrounding the find – if anything it’s only increased it. Blinkered perhaps by our modern-centric view of the past, many find it hard to encompass the idea that ancient people could possibly create an artefact as advanced as this appears to be, hence the enigmatic aura that still clings to it. That very same lingering atmosphere of mystery and awe informs this six-tracker, released on the quality Dutch Winter-Light label. Having reviewed a few of their releases now, I’ve garnered a sense of what they’re about, and I can say that this fits in perfectly with their ethos.

Starting off with the deep bass seismic rumblings of ‘Arcturus Alpha Boo’ (Arcturus Alpha Boötis ie Arcturus is the brightest star in the constellation of Boötes the herdsman, ploughman, or ox-driver), this establishes the album’s premise without any preamble. The atmosphere is distinctly inhuman, but this shouldn’t be taken in a negative context – on the contrary, it’s entirely due to being slaves to the idea that ancient peoples were incapable of inventing something so sophisticated. Put simply, the mechanism is definitely human in conception and execution, and is completely explicable from a human standpoint. Saying that, listening to this sweeping opening track one can easily envisage vast distances that are incomprehensible to the human mind, focusing on a point in the galaxy that is itself buried deeply in a matrix of mystery, imbued with forces beyond understanding, and yet with this mechanism the user establishes some kind of a connection. The music too, makes that very same connection, a link to the same universal verities that the ancients believed at the time the object was created. Furthermore, we don’t really know how the mechanism actually operated, so we are as much wrapped in the cloak of mystery about it as the ancient Greeks were of the underpinnings of the universe.

The mystery continues with ‘Metonic Spiral’ (a metonic cycle [or Enneadecaetris] is, according to Wikipedia, a period of almost exactly 19 years that is nearly a common multiple of the solar year and the synodic month, named after Meton of Athens). It begins quietly enough, swelling into the consciousness with distant reverberations, scratches, and crystalline notes that hang effortlessly in the air, only to fall with a deliberate slowness as if caught in a stretched moment of time. Perhaps this is saying that here we have an eternal mystery that only time itself understands, and thus it will forever be just out of our reach. That sense is only further emphasised when the track morphs into swirling waves of deep oscillating rumble, sending out gravitational waves of glacial deliberation. An exeligmos, as in the title of the third track ‘The Exeligmos Pointer’, is an astronomical period of 54 years, 33 days used for predicting eclipses in the same location. Pulsing echoes, more waves of bass underpinnings, indicate that the makers of the Antikythera Mechanism were aware of astronomical cycles, as slow as they are, and that they signified a quantifiable (and therefore perfectly ordered) certainty, something that only the gods were capable of instituting.

‘Time Dislocated in the Mechanism’ is our next temporal stop along the way, and we arrive to the sound of a bass rumble gently and subtly making its presence felt, which is gradually overlaid with string-like drones and what sounds like slow-motion mud bubbles popping. Perhaps, on a quantum level, this is exactly what time sounds like, if sound were able to make noise at all. The dislocation referred to in the title appears to reference a slowing down of the time-stream that we live inside, stretching out like an elastic band. Eventually these give way to even stranger noises, metallic sounds as if we’re being entertained by an alien gamelan orchestra. It’s all bizarre and indefinably unsettling, perhaps underscoring the idea that time itself is an elastic concept, subject to personal perception.

Next up is ‘Epicyclic Gearing’, a prosaic title perhaps for a thoroughly engaging piece, rhythmic in places while disjointed in others, a track that references the fact that the Greeks invented epicyclic gearing (it would take too long to explain the workings here: the internet is your friend. Suffice to say that it’s too complicated for my puny brain to get my head around). Assorted rhythms jostle for supremacy, fading in and out, coming to the fore and then receding into the background, ebbing and flowing like tides on the shores of reality. Metallic, mechanical staccatos predominate here, suggesting both the Antikythera artefact itself as well as the very precise nature of time as we understand it (or at least perceive it). It also appears to be saying that time is a function of biology – after all, the only beings who apparently ‘see’ and attach importance to time are humans, and our perception is entirely a function of the human brain.

Finally, we reach the end in the form of ‘Fragment F’, the title referring to a piece found in 2005, which is one of the major fragments that contains sixteen inscriptions. The track starts with a series of plucked tones, played in a freeform manner, perhaps indicative of the unknown nature of the purpose of the fragment in question. Overlaid upon this is a distinct carpet of gentle, soaring susurrations, like whispers of the past reaching out to us from those inscriptions, or perhaps the voices of the creators of the mechanism themselves. It all builds up to a slow climax, leaving me with the impression of a vast black hole sucking in time and swallowing it, transporting it to a place where all is lost and irretrievable. This is, perhaps, what Stephen Hawking meant when he posited the idea of information being lost inside a black hole. And yet, there are still faint echoes remaining, tantalising but incomplete, presenting us with theories and concepts that are both simultaneously tangible and elusive.

There’s very definitely a formula to each piece, as every track is essentially composed of two halves, the first half always morphing into something new and different. But isn’t this the effect that time has on the nature of reality itself? Time moves forward, and so does reality, especially in terms of human endeavour and creativity. Time affects us in intangible ways that always appear to be holding the intent of refining and perfecting. We see it all around us, in the objects we buy and sometimes replace, and in the people we surround ourselves with. Time is a slippery customer, but I think Peter Andersson has still managed to pin it down sufficiently to enable its qualities to be perceived as a function of evolution – all things have their beginnings, and they all grow and evolve, taking on new shapes and meanings as they do so. Atomine Elektrine have essentially given us a thesis as to how this all works, by taking us back to the past so that we can project ourselves into the future.

Psymon Marshall 2020.

Sysselmann - Ritual of the Aurora Noir EP

Album: Ritual of the Aurora Noir EP

Artist: Sysselmann

Label: Winter-Light

Catalogue no: WIN 025

Tracklist:

     1.      Ritual of the Aurora Noir

     2.      MS Nordlysnatt

     3.      The Long Wait (Memorial Mix)

     4.      First Winter Light

I make no secret of the fact that I have long been fascinated by the northern regions of this world of ours. If there is indeed such a thing as a soul, then mine is irresistibly drawn to the septentrional, those areas where snow and ice blanket the land, and for long periods of the year the sun is absent. I put it down to the fact that I was born in 1963, when the UK had one of the worst winters on record with drifts up to six feet in some areas – it’s a fanciful reason I know, but I’d still like to think that it did have some bearing on my love of the Scandinavian countries, and Iceland.

Be that as it may, as beautiful and stunning as we deem the colder regions, it also has its darker side, and that not all is as picture postcard perfect. Sysselmann’s third release (and his first for Winter-Light) draws moody portraits of the ice-bound (well, not so much these days sadly) head and tail of our planet, ranging from the ineffable to the darkly unsettling. When you’re subjected to complete darkness for long stretches of the year, raging blizzards, and sub-sub-zero temperatures, neither the Arctic nor Antarctica will be featured in your local travel agent’s holiday brochures anytime soon.

The title track announces the onset of the dark season, a deep drone settling heavily into the atmosphere and the wailings of wind-driven squalls bringing with it blasts of deeply freezing air. The absence of light, broken only by the sharp clarity of the star-studded vista arching above one’s head, only goes to intensify the cold, seemingly concentrating it into tiny needle-sharp spears driving unremittingly into the body in spite of layers of thermal clothing. Caught out unprepared, the only consolation you’re likely to get from this is that your last view of life will be the dancing aurora waving serenely in the sky while you lie stretched out on snow awaiting death.

‘MS Nordlysnatt’, which roughly translated means something along the lines of MS Northern Lights Night, breaks upon the consciousness with a wash of glacial waters, crackling and crepitating until a species of calm descends with quiet string-like drones. If we look up, the sky is alive with waves of light being blown by unseen winds, a celestial light-show performing to music too rarefied for us to hear. To witness such a wondrous natural phenomenon is to make contact with the numinous and transcendent, as if the sky and earth are communing and the dancing curtains are acting as a bridge between the material and the heavenly. Who knows what spirits and entities are travelling those empyrean paths, and their purpose in doing so: are they welcoming new spirits, or are they visiting those still trapped on the material plane?

Is the ‘Long Wait’ of the third track the stretch of time between the dimming of the light and its resurgence months later? One imagines the slow, multiple rotations of the stars between ‘twilight’ and ‘dawn’ here: I see a time-lapse sequence in which the stars wheel in their assigned paths while wispy, insubstantial clouds flash past on their way to warmer climes perhaps. The stars are permanent while the clouds are ephemeral, with the land they pass over somewhere in between – appearing to be here forever because of the short span of time on this planet, but inevitably disappearing in cataclysm many billions of years hence. ‘First Winter Light’ is the herald of the new dawn, the end of the reign of night, and the welcome return of the sun. Life, as sparse as it is here, awakens once more, emerging sleepily to greet the much-missed golden orb of light. It’s an unhurried process, the purpling and blueing of the horizon nothing more than a sliver at first, until the light breaks free of the shackles of night’s imprisonment, and it bursts forth to claim its rightful hegemony for the time being.

A closely studied and observed musical characterisation of the remotest and least accessible parts of the world, where life and nature is governed more heavily by the seasons than most other parts of the world (perhaps dominated would be a better word in this context). A part that is less understood, second only in mysteriousness to the deeps of the oceans. It describes and accentuates its various moods and landscapes, and our aesthetic responses to them. Perhaps this is why I truly connect with the ‘soul’ of the northern lands – it’s that ultimate mystery, fenced off from the rest of the world unless you have the means to visit it, covered in darkness physical and metaphysical, and bathed in legend and lore. To that end, I think Sysselmann’s reflections on these places successfully mirror those very aspects, delineating the beauty, the danger, and the utter serenity with precise brushstrokes.

Available as a CD in a 4-panel digipak in an edition of 200, and a digital download from the link below:

https://winter-light.bandcamp.com/album/ritual-of-the-aurora-noir

Psymon Marshall 2019. 

Kloob - Unpredictable Signs

Album: Unpredictable Signs

Artist:  Kloob

Label: Winter-Light

Catalogue no: N/A

Tracklist:

     1.      Unreachable Realms

     2.      Deep Introspection

     3.      Unique Sights

     4.      Ancient Resonances

     5.      Insondable

     6.      Full Immersion

     7.      Vulnerability Source

     8.      Endless Motion

Another Bandcamp raid conducted under the cover of darkness last night, and I came away with some glistening gems, such as this one by Dani Kloob. On the one hand the eight pieces here, seen as a whole, can be likened to the breath of the universe, or God, or God(s), an all-pervasive suffusion of gracious energy binding all together. On the other hand, there’s also a certain species of dark edginess apparent, a kind of nervous energy threatening to upset the delicate balance: superficially, everything is always as it has been but, dig a little deeper, and there are signs of a malignancy blackening and metastasising. For now, though, the body of reality continues to function, but the signs of disturbance are there for those who know where to look.

Kloob stamps his credentials on the opening ‘Unreachable Realms’, an airy, gliding meander around the far distant spheres of the unknown and unknowable universe. It sails along majestically, swooping and soaring, borne upon the winds of a low drone. ‘Deep Introspection’ is all about the inner spaces, the vast chasms between thought and perception, between understanding and action. The distances inside are as vast as those between the stars and galaxies, and knowing ourselves is just as difficult a task as it is to fully grasp the workings of the outer cosmos. Cavernous raspings and exhalations echo endlessly, sourceless and indecipherable, eluding our intellectual grasp.

Sweeping rumbles fly in on Eastern winds on ‘Unique Sights’, a layered mirage of phantasms and bejewelled cities seen only at unreachable distances. The winds venture to carry us to the fabled sights of the Orient, however their glittering lights always remain just out of reach. Perhaps ‘Ancient Resonances’ is that storied and alluring past, full of myth and legend in which those bright metropolises were built, now reaching out to us from across the ages. But it’s a double-edged sword: it is exotic, yes, but also full of danger, bright but also very murky. The light of understanding is dim, only showing the highlights and deepening the shadows to occult whatever lurks there. Indistinct mumblings can sometimes be detected, voices of lives lived to the full but now forgotten.

A solitary drone wafts in and out of hearing, accompanied by a cold, deep blast of frigid air that searches out and finds every single nook and cranny in your protection to gain access. Vision is obscured, the shapes filling your sight dancing and shifting in incomprehensible movements, both subtly enticing and thrillingly alarming. This is ‘Insondable’, a French word meaning unfathomable, an apt description of the shifting perceptions and fleeting glimpses afforded our eyes. ‘Full Immersion’ invites us to submerge below the threshold of maya, the illusory world, and enter into a quantum realm where, perhaps, what we witness is the actual reality of material existence, and that the one we experience normally is only an invented paradigm tailored specifically to our perceptual understanding and capacities. Dream selves, shadows, phantasms, creative explosions of fantastical energies, glimpses of parallel dimensions, alternative pasts, presents, and futures, all collide in one huge detonation, the results hurling themselves at the inner cinema screen of our minds, enchanting and frightening simultaneously.

‘Vulnerable Source’ hovers on the edge of fragility, an icicle in sunlight, a gossamer web gently bending with every breeze until that wind gathers strength and snaps the threads. And then, somehow, we find ourselves floating in the seas of the rarest aethers once more in ‘Endless Motion’, the airy orbits whose shores we only glimpsed in ‘Unreachable Realms’. Those lands are still unreachable, but they’re now clearer, if only a little bit so.

Kloob’s minimalistic approach works to his advantage here – spare layering of sounds, solid foundations of susurrating washes, interspersed with pinpoints of contrasting colours, counterpoints, and subtle highlights. It’s an album that’s both indicative of something just beyond our reach, a diffuse firmament to strive towards, and also, underlying that, the knowledge that beneath the dreamlands lie aspects of life and reality which are sometimes best left undisturbed, but nevertheless should be acknowledged. I was both elevated and sent flying amongst the celestial bodies, and likewise also submerged beneath the murk and silt-laden swamp waters. Mark this as a veritable contrast of moods, backed by sensitive compositional nuances, making this a set worth your time investing in.

And just look at that cover – fantastical and magnificent, reminding me of Kris Kuksi’s sculptures.

Pstmon Marshall 2019