Slowly elaborating an atmosphere where everything can be deemed a neutral disappointment of the heart, although ostensibly consistent at the same time, Portraits has in the intensity of its qualities and abilities the insurrection of a higher realm, fulfilled by the constant exhilaration of emotional battles, dragged by the painful resurgence of distant shadows overcoming the disabling despondency of a storm, lost in the sight of a preciously vivid dream.
Especially in the third track – the long, epic and monumental Девочка с персиками (“The Girl With Peaches”) – the main features of the work are drastically and distinctly revealed. An effusively dormant and lenient ambient track with subtle nuances, the sonorous framework of the song is elevated to an expansive scale of lurid expectation, despite a fragrant – although dubious and inconsistent –sense of serenity ravenously dispersing an interpretation of morbidity in the air.
Since black metal elements almost fade away in this work, having little to no prominence at all in neither of its tracks – especially in the last – to label Portraits only as an ambient album would be definitely more suitable. Nonetheless, this does not diminishes in any way the fantastic qualities and characteristics of this amazing work, as a record, and also as an imperiously marvelous work of art. Never tedious neither monotonous in any passage, all the way through, Portraits can be considered a terrific and wonderful ambient album. Certainly, has a dramatically unique sound, being expressively singular in its peculiar definition of a protuberant and composite atmosphere. Evidently, it is not like the ambient albums you have been listening so far, I positively guarantee you this fact.
Wagner