Russian ambient artist and Renaissance Man Evgenij Kharitonov first
released an album as EugeneKha on Earth Mantra back in March of 2009,
with his super-cool electronic ambient space music release Distant
Space. It is with great pleasure that we welcome Evgenij back to our
humble netlabel, this time with a powerful and dark ambient release
entitled Black Heath. We use the term
"Renaissance Man" deliberately. Not only is he an accomplished
musician, with work spanning genres as diverse as ambient, IDM, techno,
post-rock, and many other forms, he is also a poet, writer, and
audiovisual artist. Despite the diversity of his work, or perhaps
because of it, one of Evgenij's most astonishing attributes is that his
every release is new, refreshing, and completely different from
anything he has done before. It takes a true artist to be able to
reinvent one's self over and over again, and to do it so consistently
and over so many releases is just staggering.
This release is no
exception. Unlike his previous work on Earth Mantra, with Black Heath
Evgenij has created a truly ominous and foreboding collection of dark
ambient pieces that are as equally scarey as they are beautiful. Truly,
this is not music to be listening to in the dark on a cold, stormy
night alone, unless one enjoys spine-tingling fear or the disturbing
sensation that one is not alone in listening to the music.
For
this is dark ambience in the truest sense of the phrase, replete with
huge impenetrable walls of darkness, atonal and abstract textural
soundscapes, and plenty of eerie surprises and things going bump in the
night. The music is very active, not at all the mournful dirge that
dark ambient often becomes, but instead almost the soundtrack to a
particularly shocking horror movie. While listening, in our mind's eye
we saw bonfires and torches, strange rituals performed amidst great
stone edifices, and above all, storm clouds, some distant and some
immediately above our heads. Truly startling stuff.
But despite
the darkness, there is tremendous and compelling beauty to savor in
this album as well, though it is often a powerful, commanding sort of
beauty. The compositions themselves are to us the highest point of the
release; Evgenij has done a remarkable job of taking simple motifs and
building upon them until huge epic structures are created. One always
has the sense that the music is intentionally designed and composed
rather than happening as some kind of creative accident, which in the
dark ambient world is rare indeed. Very nicely done.
Black Heath
is truly a superb collection of dark ambient pieces, and one we are
very glad to bring to our audience. We look forward to every release by
EugeneKha, on Earth Mantra as well as other netlabels, and look forward
to more from him in the future.
Track-listing: 01 - Shades of Night Music (11:54, 27.8 MB) 02 - Black Heath (Horror Mix) (12:34, 29.4 MB) 03 - Strange Visitors (5:08, 12.0 MB) 04 - Dark Corridors (12:50, 30.1 MB) 05 - Dungeon Draughts (8:44, 20.4 MB) 06 - Black Heath (The Long Atmospheric Mix) (24:23, 57.1 MB)