drone / power ambient

My writer's block decided to shatter into pieces when this release fell into our morbidly obese mailbox. I absolutely adored FOUDRE!'s previous effort, the soundtrack for the film 'Earth', featuring Christine Ott (read). These four French drone masters again recorded a live session, which will be released by the end of November. 'Kami神' was improvised in Toulouse as support act for doom metal band Monarch!'s 10th anniversary concert. I can easily imagine that crowd of metalheads having enjoyed the hell out of this performance.

To be honest, I haven't listened to FOUDRE!'s older work yet, but their label Gizeh Records proudly presents 'Kami神' as a surprising album. They're right. 

The main theme immediately takes me back to the ending of Godspeed You Black Emperor!'s magical performance at the Rivierenhof in Antwerp last summer, where a minimalistic, compelling tune repeated itself for at least a quarter of an hour, while the artists gave it their own last touch before leaving the stage one by one. That was a transcendental experience; after a breathtaking concert the entire audience kept quiet until the whole thing faded out for good. This memory or feeling might slightly colour my listening experience of 'Kami神' but don't let that stop you in any way to check it out for yourself.

This thread is present in every track, which is comforting. Yet, like on 'Earth', the sounds continuously evolve. As early as the second track, I start moving. Yes, this drone album has beats, very Biosphere-like. And chants. And post rock-like guitars. Percussion. Screams, even. Noise. And fucking power electronics. Shit! At the first listen, my mouth fell open. FOUDRE! surpasses 'Earth', something that I didn't know would be possible. 

The doorbell rang, and it took me twenty minutes to descend into reality (luckily our visitor knows that we're weird people). That's how immersive this jewel is. Buy it!

For fans of Svaixt, Barst, Thisquietarmy, CHVE, anything at Maschinenfest, anything that drones...


Eline

post rock

Heaven Can Wait is an album released by ambient post rock group Khara, from Macedonia. A very concise album, only thirty minutes long, the work has five tracks: Heaven Can Wait, Suddenly Awake, Imagining Ghosts, Can You Fix A Broken Memory? and Through The Darkness, We Became Men. An album with a calm, sweet and serene atmosphere, Heaven Can Wait is better described as conventional post rock. With strong qualities – like consistent rhythms, flexible guitar lines and effective harmonies – the style of the group is meticulously consistent. Despite the sometimes excessively slow melodies, the album showcase a band with a modest degree of competent creativity and discreet technical abilities, that knows how to intelligently display its diluted virtues in a more melancholic, dense and lugubrious atmosphere. 

With a proficient technique, that encircles its diluted ocean of highly concentrated peripheral harmonies in a more convergent stream of sensibilities, the music of Khara focuses the strength of its sound on the creation of a torrid and intense, but at the same time deeply sincere and humane atmosphere. Gracefully exhibiting in all the traces of its musical tenderness the essence of its soul, the passionate vitality of the melodies comes from the concentrated synergy of its unquestionable creative veracity, that is seemingly dissipated in every note of its fabulous lugubrious cadences.

Despite the fact that the album follows a general pattern of slow harmonies, the songs are instinctive pieces of introspective liberty. With a curious expansive anatomy, and a fatalist dispersive nature that overexposes the shadow of its constrained resonant disturbances, the music in Heaven Can Wait is practically an elegy to a solitary afternoon, forever lost in the winter funeral of an everlasting sorrow, that reclaims its own deceptive grief to consistently bury all the days to come. 

With a formidable level of beauty that certainly surpasses the prerogative of its abundant and intrinsic commonalities, Heaven Can Wait, on a more general basis, is definitely an ordinary post rock album. Nevertheless, on the other hand, there is a magnificent degree of originality exposed on the profoundness of its laborious and cohesive essence; especially on the latent, genuine and creative sincerity upon which the music expresses a passionate, infinite and pervasive level of melancholy, without ever disrupting it. Giving form and consistence to a sound that elaborates on the resonance of its own continuity, Heaven Can Wait certainly can be considered an interesting album, that has enough qualities to captivate an audience.


Wagner

post rock

Before This Wilderness Consumes US is an album released by Swedish post rock band Feed Me To The Waves. Almost forty-two minutes long, the record has only five very extensive tracks: The Permian, Weave Your Fur (Landfish), The Open Narrows, It's Really Nice Weather Down Here and Shutter. A beautiful, relaxing album, with a predominantly slower pace, the record has the lucid serenity of a stagnant horizon as its fundamental component. With an elegant, gentle and gracious sympathy, the style of the group is simple, but drastically profound, with its continuous flow of lugubrious patience ardently emphasizing the consistency of the harmonies, over the introspective rhythmic devices of the sonorous anatomy of its peaceful intuitive layer. 

While the mordacity of the songs seems to gracefully reverberate over its inherent perennial cadences, the exponential splendor of serenity engraves all the sensitive majesty that is the embodiment of the songs. The harmonies undertake an extraordinary journey, that notifies the spirit of its creative splendor. So, the work definitely has a profound, proverbially methodic and philosophic nature, highlighted by a style cohesively applied on the anatomy of its discreet, but colorful musical pragmatism, which is indeed very beautiful and functional, but the prevalent calmness that oversees the entire album can be felt as a minor deficiency. Nevertheless, the album presents a formidable musical consistency, that serves to its sensible quest for a higher and more dispersive pattern of artistry. 

The guitar lines are quite abrasive, pungent and intense, all the musical paradigms can be felt as a dense version of reality flowing throughout the abstract vitalities of its laborious virtues. The most discreet elements of the music are anomaly hidden behind the shadows of its linear, but irreplaceable patience, that drives a coherent musical diagram throughout the vicinities of its own salutary acquiescence. Unfortunately, chances are high that the listener will eventually become exasperated with so much uneasy tenderness. 

There is definitely a restless veracity on the surface of these beautiful harmonies, that reveals a latent splendor and an authorial creativity that has a brutal strength hidden within its latent mordacity and restrained anatomy. The technical skills and the general layer of the music displays a very cohesive sonorous disposition, but there are deceptive elements that makes predictability and sameness to be major deficiencies, upon which the group fails to avoid.    

Before This Wilderness Consumes US, in the end, is a decent, curious and gracious, but overwhelmingly diffuse, dispersive and lethargic album. It is very good for specific moments, especially if you want to relax completely alone, in a solitary confinement. Otherwise, you will hear it with genuine joy and enthusiasm, but this sentiments will gradually disappear, as the album evolves. Don’t get me wrong, this is a very good album, but fails to achieve a more salutary standard of excellence. 


​Wagner

progressive rock / post rock / experimental / alternative

Naegleria is an album released on October 12, by Greek instrumental progressive/post rock band Movement Of Static. Almost forty seven minutes long, the record has ten tracks: Slowlly We Are..., 57 084 INICIAL' 76 16 56 79, The Passage, 77 56 01 51 AGGRADACIYA 05 51 55 97, Mountain Of Life, 6EQUJ5, 80 516 GANOMATIT 21 23 86 25, Diaspasis, 93-882-NAIMINA-74-14-35-74 and ...Fading From Our Existence. An exceedingly authentic, sensational and creative post rock act, whose organic sound deeply penetrates and collides with the omniscient harmonies of its virulent, but consistent splendor, the melodies on this album seems to deliberately fluctuate between a groundbreaking serenity and a solitary aggressiveness, that anticipates the energy of a ferocious, but rational agony, with a formidable level of vitality, that completely dilacerates all the reticent labyrinths of its enigmatic and profuse restlessness. 

With a proficient elusiveness that concurs with the gentle, but somewhat abrasive spontaneity of its expansive sonorous nature, the music delivered in Naegleria is a virtuous and unexpected journey throughout the abysses of a diluted, but circumspect mordacity, that gradually reinvents in a liquid ocean of abstract sagacity the glorious elements of a dilated sentimental grace. At the innermost gravity of its surreal kingdoms of timeless rapture, some fabulous passages are almost meticulous studies on the flexible art of space, and its correlation within discreet undertones of placid tenacity and peripheral melodies of lugubrious elasticity; everything sidelined with ardent, but brightly philosophic guitar lines, that decipher in the nucleus of its impeccabilities a complex diagram of sensibilities, that aspire to be a wandering soul completely submerged in the vicinities of a long lost everlasting sadness. 

With a poetic and melancholic nature, that doesn’t surpass its vibrant and transcendental qualities, I should point it out that the name of the group – Movement of Static – basically describes their style: the music will make you feel stagnated in some distant horizon of the universe, but at the same time, the relentless motion that keeps the mind moving makes the listener to be aware of the life around him, as well as the life inside him. The lucidity suggested by their organic, but marvelously pretentious style makes you collide towards a universe stagnated, but euphorically in constant movement. The pungent lucidity of consciousness redirects the entire existential grace of an infinite dimension of majestic dormancy, that anxiously surpasses the pain of reality, marvelously engraved in the arid territory of dreams that recognizes the fragile grace of life as its main fuel.  

Although I wouldn’t qualify Naegleria as a masterful nor fantastic album, because some passages are – to a certain extent –, predictable and monotonous, the album gets very close of being classified as a masterpiece of the genre. With a natural fury, an organic atmosphere, a latent execration of ordinary musical parameters and a surreal level of originality, this album certainly deserves to be regarded as an exceptional work, abundant in systematic artistic virtuosity, and genuine musical development. 


​Wagner

dark ambient / noise

GH Records

What is this? A question my son asked when I started to listen to Abattior & Satori’s  Megaloschemos  for this review. Well, we can insure you that the transubstantiation  wasn’t a light one. The second partnership between Italy’s Lorenzo Abattoir and legendary UK project Satori is not an easily digestible piece of work. Lorenzo Abattoir is an underground harsh noise artist and sound engineer. His work is connected with contemporary art. The previous project of Abattoir (Psicopompo) was a collaboration with German composer Hermann Kopp. An experimental occult death opera was the result. Dave Kirby is the only original member of the power electronics-dark ambient project Satori which has already released more than a dozen stunning recordings. 

Megaloschemos starts with a dark ambient intro. The whirring and echoing machinery teeth on The Great Vow give the track a scary depth. The hunting electronic choruses are inserted many times more than in their previous work (Aether) and create an obscure atmosphere. There is a little more mercy on this album. Second hell: Hesychasm, starts with noise but instantly changes into Gothic movements sending us to immense deep loneliness. This is no music for untrained ears.

Sabasius (God on horseback) and Adrastus (King of Argus) refer to the Greek Mythology. The deep distortion and religious chants take us back to the days without light on this planet. The nightmare continues with Eschatology and Hermetism. 

Octoechoes took us back to their first album Aether, noise brutality with pauses filled with deep pitch black chants. Abattoir & Satori serves us tracks filled with dark obscurity, glitchy noise and Gothic breading engines colored with jabbering soundscapes. 

Megaloschemos is an experimental search of sound boundaries and emotions without a knowing end. This is a grotesque, brain boiling work with very doom and frightening sound architecture. Dark ambient lovers will be very keen with this profound album. CD limited to 300 copies.


​Patsker

black metal

Once in a while a record comes along that makes you frown, as it does not really fit into an existing category. Enter Ophidian Forest with “VotIVe”

On second view, I should have known better; the drummer of this three-person outfit is Otrebor, who also mans the kettles at green metallers Botanist – a band that only sings about vegetation and uses a dulcimer to create experimental black metal. So it should come as no surprise that Ophidian Forest doesn't exactly follow the Trve Metal handbook step-by-step.


So, how does it sound, then? Well, imagine a cross between dungeon synth (you know, cheesy synth sounds) and black metal (shrieks, blast beats, complex song structures). Throw in a couple of real ear-worm tunes, and you're pretty close. In most songs, the guitar is buried under a wall of synthesizer sounds, only occasionally managing to crawl to the surface. It still sounds cvlt, though, thanks to the lo-fi drumming and Amalgamoth's shrieking.

Almost every song has something special on offer. In opener “Nerthus”, halfway through there's what sounds like a hellish fanfare piping their way through a dense forest. Instrumental “Viredectis” has synth sounds that wouldn't be out of place on a John Carpenter soundtrack. There's banjo's, flutes, eerie vocals, you name it. And weirdly enough, it all comes together perfectly, sounding like a modern-day pagan ritual.

Ophidian Forest is a three-man band, existing since 2006. Fascinatingly, the three members (Otrebor, guitarist D, and Dutchman Amalgamoth) have never met in person, but create their music while collaborating over the internet. Pretty cyberish for a band who only sings about elder, forgotten gods. All in all, I'm quite impressed by this unique work of metal!


​Koen

progressive rock / post rock / experimental

Four Light Years from Home is an album released on October 1, by instrumental progressive rock group Across Seconds, from Mumbai, India. A very concise album, only thirty two minutes long, the record has seven tracks: Flow, T Minus 10, Astral Drift, Mayday, A Perfect World, Four Light Years from Home and Ebb. A very good, incisive album – despite the fact that, at least at first, there’s nothing too exceptional nor superb about it –, the group has an interesting sonorous dynamic. The songs are well created, and their general melodies are indeed very beautiful and pleasant to hear. You can appreciate this album without any fear. Despite some rude limitations, there is a sincere and organic plasma of genuine creativity here, that it’s definitely enjoyable and lucid.  

With generally slower and calmer harmonies, Four Light Years from Home has virtuous and solid melodies, that dance over the sonorous frontiers of its own cadences. With bold guitar lines – that, paradoxically, feels a little generic, following a pattern that definitely seems exhausted by the genre – the rhythms exhibit a general layout of passionate serenity, whose uncompromised sensibility virtually delivers innocently the proverbial tenacity of its ardent musical rules.     

With an intelligent sonorous mordacity that comprehends its own creative limitations, the expansive musical universe upon which the melodies display its vigorous potential for artistic dilution is exceedingly satisfactory, despite the fact that – on the rapturous density of its solitary continental calmness –, the group could have pushed their instinctive boundaries a little further beyond the line. Nevertheless, the constrained modest greatness of their creative ambitions definitely fit into their sensational colorful horizon of sweet melancholy, that waits for the sunset to arrive, before the departure of all the souls in the abyss. 

With interesting poetic elements that gracefully emphasize the generous kindness and delicacy of their music, Across Seconds definitely conceived Four Light Years from Home as a beautiful and touching work of art. One that you definitely will feel compelled to hear, several times. 


Wagner

black metal

An instrumental intro on a record is like foreplay during sexual intercourse: when done right, you know that whatever comes next, rarely ever goes wrong - and such is the case with Khandra’s latest release, which goes by the name of “There is no division outside existence”.

​Last year's "All is of no avail" was well received, so I was curious to check out these Belarusian Black Metallers' new hellspawn.

Drones, industrial percussion and church bells gradually build up into a Dense atmosphere, which sets the appropriate mood for opener “Decaying into the ascended”. There’s some surprisingly groovy riffing in this song, and Vladimir Borodulin’s vocals are satisfyingly grating.

Album closer “progressing in desolation” is remarkable because the band uses the “I V VI IV” chord scheme, which is normally only applied by pop bands (check Axis of Awesome’s “Four chords” if you are not familiair with this). But somehow in this song, Khandra makers it work.

To conclude, with "There Is No Division Outside Existence", these Belarussians have crafted a solid five-track EP. Time for me to revisit their previous work. Nice!  


Koen

post black metal

Christian “Marrok” Brauch, mastermind of Austria’s Anomalie, is perhaps better known as live guitarist for Harakiri for the Sky. His own band, Anomalie, exists since 2011, and “Integrity” is their fourth release. The band themselves call their music “Atmospheric Blackened Soundscapes”, though more generally this release can be labelled as post-black metal.
​
Thematically, the album deals with rebirth, and rising above oneself – which is reflected in the energizing music. There's only four songs on the CD, each of them equally exciting. For me, the strong point in this release are the vocals. There’s a lot of ritual chanting, which at times gives the music an almost sacrale atmosphere. This, combined with tribal drums and bells, really, umm, rings my bell.

“Integrity” does not merely sound like a collection of songs, but like a coherent story that Marrok had to tell. Anomalie is touring with Schammasch and Naglfar end of this year, and I can't wait to hear how they translate this to a live audience.


Koen

dark ambient

Quote from Antonius Stark aka Ravin:  “There are no limits to how art is created!”

Blind your windows, move to your cellar or dig a dark hole somewhere near a graveyard. Don’t forget to take your headphones with you. Ravin creates dark ambient and drone music. He released his debut album Daemonography on Darkon Records. This Canadian artist gets his inspiration from the dark and humming nature where he lives. Eight frightening dark ambient tracks where born during long insomniac nights he was suffering from.


Unhuman Presence In The Flesh starts with an evil hart beat surrounded in drones that will cave you in. Daemonography takes you even deeper to that dark dungeon, doubting that you probably will never get out. The drones are boosted with strange noisy sounds just like cold winds freezing the door of your prison cell. The tension is build up and vanishes slowly while you los starting e grip on your senses. The compositions contain enough changes to keep on the undergoing journey in this cinematic world. The Circle Downstairs and Desolation guided us in an Archeronian SF mood. 

The next trip Sofia Is Not Alone felt like we wanted to quit listening. The droning stays too long on the same level. It takes a long while when something happens. Something Is Here Within has more variability but has the same problem like the previous track. Turmoil wants to give some turmoil with beats but gets stuck in the noisy drones.

Unmarked takes us back into the grim atmosphere like the first part of the album. Dark sounds coloured with choirs confirming your hell. Unmarked  and  Daemonography are the best creations on this album by far.

Conclusion: Ravin composes interesting dark ambient sounds with a noisy touch. The first part of the soundtrack is very good but loses after track four in strength, due to lack of variation. The ending gives us back the thoughts of buried evilness. I need a drink.


​Patsker