With
"Years Lend A Golden Charm" we are invited to experience the very birth
of what is now a well established project within the Dark Ambient
Industrial scene. 73 minutes of material from the first three DM
cassette releases from 1993 ("Consecrare", "Via Peregrinus", "Hortus
Conclusus / Triptych"), plus one previously unreleased track. Highly
sought after by collectors but only available in a mere dozen handmade
copies, these songs are now finally made available to a greater
audience. When you listen to the music with the knowledge that
hindsight brings, it is obvious that these are the roots and the
foundations, not only of the first full album "Songs Over Ruins", but
of every subsequent release up to the latest, "Seven Sorrows". Russian
import in a digipak.
"Malefeasance"
is a lengthy and complex affair that further explores L'Acephale's
fascinations and strikes headlong into the darkest of musical vistas.
The journey this time is perhaps even more academic than the debut
"Mord Und Totsclag": further ethnographic audio elements are now
present, more spacious passages, a deeper approach. A mix of ambient,
warping tones, black metal, chanting, ethereal keyboards, drones,
acoustic guitars, noise, field recordings and Tibetan ritual music. The
last two tracks best show the nature of Set Sothis' collaborations with
Markus Wolff (Waldteufel, Crash Worship), sharing some of his vocal and
percussive styles. By no means do L'Acephale make music for the casual
listener. In many ways they transcend the preconceived ideas of what
may be expected: L'Acephale are most successful at operating beyond the
constraints of genre altogether, and 'Malefeasance', with its dark,
dreamlike and harrowing atmospheres, is their testament.
Reissue
of the eponymous album from this Dutch act, originally released in an
edition of 50 copies in 2007. Music about forests, transcendence,
cleansing, drowning, fire and light. Technical innovations +
atmospheric aesthetics and thus the 'black' of black metal music,
prepared piano music by 20th century avant-gardist composers, some art
rock, ambient and shoegaze of the 90s, ritual music, Neofolk, bending,
functional dissonance, non-song-based structuring and vocal
experiments. Pro-pressed CD, presented in a handmade wooden gatefold
sleeve with cloth lining and 4 inserts. Wrapped in incense-dried leaves
and sealed in a plastic sleeve. Highly recommended!
A
patient, careful, dark ambient / apocalyptic work by Nocturne,
requiring a deep, contemplative listing. This is at first a music of
tension with an atmosphere of imminent disaster. And yet, from this
magma of telluric electronic shocks and drones, emerges sharper,
harsher sounds. An album embodying the unity of opposites, leading us
to perceive a struggle between what's buried and what arises... between
annihilation and the revelation of a hidden light. Ltd x 600 copies in
a gatefold digifile.
Sollubi are a side project of US artists Corey Bing (Fistula) and Scott Stearns (Rape-X).
They play a very original kind of psychedelic rock / doom metal /
sludge. You can hear the down tempo and the heavy sound of Fistula with
a psychedelic and noisy vibe made by Rape-X. "Sollubi craft songs that,
while long, retain their root anger, rather than lose their edge by
making some lame attempt at being epic. Combined EyeHateGod and Yob?
Maybe, if the latter were less cosmic and the former much, much
slower." (StonerRock.com)
