Third solo album for this musician / composer and apparently a major departure from previous work which was a mix of electro-acoustic instrumentation and power electronics, “Hypnos” is a wonderfully delirious and immersive work done entirely with electric guitars and synthesisers. This could very well end up on many people’s Top Ten Lists for 2012 and be regarded as one of Diaz de Leon’s best recordings. I find it hard to categorise this recording as it seems to be a mix of so many different influences and inspirations: there are many looped rhythms, a noisy hard edge, heavy distorted guitar tones, creepy synth sound effects, repetitive trance melodies and an epic doomy ambience running throughout all seven tracks. If there’s any act that comes close to what Diaz de Leon is doing here, it’d be Nadja when at its most inspired and original.

The album begins powerfully with “Oneirogen” which is at once bright, beautiful, shimmery and ethereal yet intense, unfolding like a giant flower that comes into bloom once every ten years to spread a heavy fragrance that quickly overpowers you and then disperses just as fast and teasingly. “Consumed” borrows from the sonic vocabulary of death metal to put on a heavy distorted, grinding act, a bit bombastic at times, but always menacing and slightly on the hysterical side, like a heavier, grimmer and more disciplined version of Gnaw Their Tongues. “Hypnocaust” takes the menace to another level, one more deranged as pulsing UFOs start taking off and landing, and space-ships spurt glowing radioactive gloops of hot light while a processed guitar burps and erupts with rumble.

“Cinerum” is a subdued piece, murky and mysterious, soothing sometimes but not all that serene in spite of the presence of what sounds like warm orchestral strings and a deep reassuring bass. “Faithless” stutters along with a heavy electronic rhythm while all around shimmer washes in and out and high-pitched drones scream overhead. The track pauses briefly and all of a sudden ghostly voices that might have come from an Njiqahdda album invade the ravaged music landscape and briefly turn the space inside your head into an utterly wrecked wasteland.

“Kukulcan” appears much influenced by black metal with sheets of ambient tremolo guitar haze falling over a grinding bass drone. Somehow I’m reminded of Wolves of the Throne Room though their music probably isn’t that much like the track here; it must be a feeling of majesty here that brings that Cascadian band to mind. By way of conclusion, “Dissolution” revisits “Oneirogen” as though Diaz de Leon has reined in his naughty children and is resetting his course to take us away on another amazing music journey; yet the track seems darker and subdued, as if in realisation that amazing music journeys can be perilous and can put your sanity on the line.

Well here’s one listener who’s prepared to put her sanity on the line again and again and again … this CD has barely left my player since I got it. It will be hard for Diaz de Leon to top this one and maybe he shouldn’t even try. This recording is one exhilarating voyage through some very heavy and mesmerising soundscapes.

Contact: Shinkoyo

Featuring the kind of bleak, dark noisy psychedelic blues that I usually expect from the PSF Records guy, Miminokoto’s “Hitoyogiri” maintains Japanese psych-guitar rock’s strangle-hold on my fragile psyche. Generally the music on this CD is melancholy and wistful, or at the very least has a dark, inward ambience with steady low-key vocals that rarely become very emotional plus a blues-tinged guitar that may have a darkly sparkling tone and drumming that starts off quiet and steady and eventually erupts into virtuosic playing. A couple of  tracks feature cloudbursts of searing distorted lead guitar and these songs will be the highlights of the album for many listeners including me.

The title track sets the pattern or template if you like for the songs to follow: the start of the song is just barely there and what develops is a repetitive rhythm that more or less continues for the duration of the track with some variations, usually those that turn on a change of key. Vocals begin quietly and are almost inaudible but become louder, a bit more emphatic, as the music progresses. The song becomes more free-form and near the end, it’s become chaotic with blurry, distorted lead guitar tones and quite complex, improvised drumming. “Midsummer’s End” follows the pattern but with a sparkling blues guitar melody.

The next couple of tracks see the Miminokoto men hit their stride: “Hands of the Night” features some really wistful, beautiful romantic melodies with the bassline following a different inspiration from the rest of the music. There’s a flubby wah-wah sound inter-twined with the pleasant bass-guitar melody. Rhythm guitar tones can be very resonant. “For Garbanzo” has a plodding riff but the lead guitar breaks are what really make this album stand out: streams and streams of fuzzed-up guitar noise pour out of the speakers and fill up the space in your head until your eyes see colourful bright day-glo pin-pricks twinkling and dancing up and down in revolving concentric circles that themselves perform their own little square dance routines and form all kinds of strange geometric optical illusions that are usually featured only on Japanese psychologist and optical illusions buff Akiyoshi Kitaoka’s website.

“Milky Light” is a faithful cover of the Kousokuya song, right down to the anguished vocals. Only the blurry lead guitar break-outs indicate that this is Miminokoto and not that doomy band whose leader Jutok Kaneko is, alas, no longer on this sad plane of existence. After this song, Miminokoto return to their familiar territory of minimal-sounding, bluesy psych-rock for a final hurrah but “Trembling Tongue” seems strangely inadequate after what we’ve just heard – proof if needed that nothing, not even the M guys, can quite match Kousokuya in the Department of Dark Despair.

Good if perhaps not very inspired with strong blues influences, some fired-up noise guitar and a great sparkling, bewitching sound, Miminokoto serves up almost (but not quite) easy-listening psych-rock. I can certainly recommend this album as a beginner’s guide to this particular Japanese-owned genre.

Environmental field recording expert Francisco López teams up with Xabier Erkizia to go a-sailing down the Bidasoa river in the Basque country to capture the sounds of hydroelectric power plants and then independently convert these recordings into two sets of abstract experimental musique concrète / drone ambience. López quests for a detached approach in which noise textures gradually change and evolve into something almost organic though very machine-like and Erkizia converts his sounds into a more lively pair of noisescapes.

As with many of his recordings, López’s two contributions are merely numbered and they are very cool and calm in delivery. Grainy noise patterns pass smoothly, one into another, while rhythm-like structures are provided by machines at work within the plants, marking out time perhaps or the various processes involved in channeling water past humming turbines. It seems that even the silence between tracks is very significant; here, it is very suggestive of going underwater deep down, as far down as the river-bed goes. The machines take on an alien life of their own, mysterious, clinical and inaccessible to humans; it’s serene and steady though of course unemotional and in that, quite creepy and intimidating. The last few minutes of “Untitled #267″ are perhaps the most sinister for they are at sub-audible levels and are characterised by twitchy clicks and hisses that stalk the blackness.

Erkizia’s contributions are much, much more dramatic and startling: he includes flowing turbulent water as well as near-silent hisses and unsettling ambience in his two works. There is much more tension in the series of sounds as it flips from water sluicing through channels to more steady crumbly noise mini-showers to periods of quiet hum and the odd whisk of grit and electronic twitch. Probably the most dynamic part of the whole disc comes at the start of “Bidasoa, presak” where several layers of noise texture proceed and you could almost swear that there are voices in there somewhere: the piece at this point might have come from an black metal / noise ambient fusion recording.

It would have been a more interesting recording if the two artists had included a track where their separate recordings are combined and perhaps remixed by a third person who could add his/her own touches and distortions to the found sounds. As it is, “Elektra Bidasoa” suggests López hasn’t changed his approach much since I last heard him nearly a decade ago and Erkizia’s own work is too choppy and can’t quite make up for short-comings in the other’s tracks. Very little of the awesome power of the hydroelectric power plants is conveyed and there’s no sense of the huge volumes of water that must rush through them each day.

Contact: Ferns Recordings, Francisco Lopez, Xabier Erkizia

This double CD set is Caïna’s swansong release and what a way to go with nine originals and nine reworked songs. Andrew Curtis-Bignell hired some big names including Imperial from Krieg, Rennie Resmini and Chris Ross to help out on vocals and lyrics, and the result can be quite impressive if not always clear.

The first CD in the set is the “Hands that Pluck” album proper, the second CD being a bonus EP set. Hard to tell the difference between the two CDs though where style is concerned: on both discs, the music is wildly all over the place. Even within the same song, the style of music can veer and dip suddenly into cosmic space ambience from a tide of black metal fury or something almost punky. The first two tracks tend to pass in a blur but with undercurrents of sonic tunefulness and steady rhythm. More complex moods, atmospheres and musical structures come with the title track and the track following after: post-rock and a martial rhythm dominate the fourth track that also features a lonely mood. “Callus and Cicatrix” introduces a more decadent Gothic flavour with weirdly theatrical voices amid the roars and brittle black metal. The album continues in this way with a mixture of spacey ambience, flourishes of black metal anger and long passages of contemplative melodic rock. For a last album, you’d think Caina had finally found a fairly definite and distinctive style to settle into but no, ACB is as restless as ever musically as well as personally and existentially.

The second CD features 2011-dated reworkings of songs released on previous albums; the new versions won’t be to everyone’s taste as some are definitely lite-metal pieces. As on the “Hands that Pluck” release proper, there is a bewildering variety of styles running from jangly dark melodic blues rock boasting plenty of atmospheric space and intensity to steely black metal roar and trilling guitar tone, to spacey acid synth effects. “Validity” is a deeply affecting instrumental with pretty melodies and a jazzy percussion rhythm overlaid with wispy synth and jagged BM riffs. “The Last Song” is a surprisingly laidback countrified piece with jangly guitar, a lazy loping rhythm and melodies that drip, drip, drip like beautiful raindrops.

“To Funk the Night Up by its Shit” is one of two reworkings (the other being “To Pluck the Night Up by its Skin”) of the track “Wormword over Albion” that appeared on “Mourner”: this is a disco instrumental with a rubbery marching pace, pleasant enough in itself but sounding like filler material. “Permaneo Carmen (2011 remaster)” is hardly different from the original on “Mourner”, just a bit bulked up perhaps. The second reworking of “Wormwood over Albion” features new lyrics delivered in a highly abrasive and noisy style that doesn’t quite suit the melody (a bit stand-offish) but is otherwise an agreeable track to finish the album with, with a spoken word field recording that incites unease and slashing riffs cutting through the talk.

As farewell albums go, I wish “Hands that Pluck” had more focus and fire than flightiness. You always want your favourite bands to go out with a bang and “Hands that Pluck” doesn’t quite reach that pyrotechnic level. “Callus and Cicatrix” is the highlight of the disc with a delirious blend of tough BM and deranged voices.

Try to get the double set rather than the album and EP separately if you want to complete your Caïna collection.

Contact: Profound Lore Records

Bands like Alcest sure do like to mock the arbitrary boundaries separating black metal and softer, melody-based forms of what was once was called indie shoegazer pop. One can combine harsh music like BM, noise or industrial with melodic and sonically smooth song-based structures and elements to create accessible and highly expressive music in which the darkest and the brightest emotions such as joy and despair co-exist easily. Alcest achieves this fusion of dark and light genres on Ecailles de Lune; the music expresses melancholy, longing, grace and hope as well as anger and urgency in ways that are beautiful, elegant and spacious. The sound is usually clear and liquid, even when the BM guitar textures are at their grimmest and most abrasive. Though harsh and soft musical elements might be expected to create tension and a sense of unease and foreboding, here they produce a sense of wholeness which may not necessarily be reflected in the lyrics. Indeed the danger here is that sometimes the music is a bit too smooth and happy and lacking in the spark that a rougher and sharper approach in the music’s recording might give.

The two tracks that make up the parts to “Ecailles de Lune” run the gamut from pensive and sombre to hope and longing to be at one with nature in mood. Acoustic, melodic guitar melodies touched with reverb can be dark, jangly and dreamy, and put the listener in a slightly mesmeric mood. Batteries of BM guitar riffs that smack the ears after episodes of sparkling dreaminess seem ill-advised but the impact and contrast in sound in texture between the acoustic and BM elements aren’t great. There are folk influences in some of the guitar-playing which smooth over any differences and awkward juxtapositions. The vocals vary a great deal from smooth and contemplative clean-toned singing and murmuring to throaty BM-styled screeching.

The rest of the album sounds like a footnote to the “Ecailles …” parts even though it carries the bulk of the album’s theme. Listeners may think they’ve stumbled into well-worn Burzumesque melody territory with “Percees de Lumieres” with the poppy melody and steady drum-beats – but then the song detours into darkly moody and meandering paths of stuttering guitar sparkle. “Abysses” is a welcome if brief and undeveloped venture into alien deep-space ambience. The last two tracks form a complementary pair: “Solar Song” sounds an easy-listening celebratory piece but it seems drained of energy; and outro track “Sur l’Ocean Couleur de Fer” is its dark twin, sorrowful and wistful in mood and style as the alternative universe shuts up shop and recedes away from the listener.

Alcest man Neige has poured love and care into crafting this album – and beautifully made it is too, the songs following a narrative which is reflected in the album’s whimsical cover art, seen through a portal. The entire work though is missing a distinctive flavour, a zest that would give it real life and individuality and lift it into a realm of greatness. The theme is a well-worn one: going on an internal or mystical journey in a different dimension and ending up abandoned or alone. Something is needed to freshen it and make the alternative universe in the ocean appear as if visited for the very first time. Perhaps if Neige had used more folk music elements and drawn on French folk cultures connected with fishing or the sea for inspiration, the music would have real zing. For an album that has melancholy a-plenty, Ecailles de Lune is not exactly brimming with the kind of existential angst or repressed violence that might at any moment explode and lift the album to a higher level of sonic expression.

My feeling is that with BM shoegazer pop, something a bit off-kilter, some slight eccentricity perhaps, is needed. With all due respect for Neige, who’s probably sweated more than a few buckets over his Alcest project, I don’t think it’s enough that the music is technically perfect and beautiful: it must have something that actually makes it a bit less than perfect. Otherwise over time, the music will lose its spark and end up stale, dated and generic.

Contact: Neige / Alcest

Finnish act Ride for Revenge traffic in a filthy-sounding, slurpy, encrusted form of black metal that happens to assimilate whatever bits and pieces of other music genres that take RfR’s fancy and Under the Eye demonstrates this cosmopolitan side very well: the opening track alone is an all-electronic message from aliens from a far galaxy warning of what’s gonna hit us if we don’t pay heed. Pay heed or not, we get hit anyway with hard-hitting reptilian BM complete with throaty monster vocals, some slimed over with reverb, of the sort only an ectothermic herpetologist could love. The music probably owes as much to death metal as it does to black metal. Drums stutter and machine effects hover about and hoover up resisting mortals to digest and spit out in the form of dried husks. In parts this music is reminiscent of Rigor Sardonicus though it’s not quite as barmy as those moss-embalmed Americans who to date have not given away the secret of their batty cymbal.

Most tracks are very short and if you sneeze, you’re liable to miss them. “Prevail in Hell” is an early highlight with martial drums, a scratchy lead guitar and a groovy rhythm that develops later in the track. The music flows surprisingly well and the more I hear this album, the more I detect a smooth groovy quality that gets my head nodding and swaying, strange though that seems. Special mention must be made of “The Endless Flood” for a latter section in which the band tortures a horrible space monster.

The second half of the album improves on the first half: “Through” has a deep spoken vocal reminiscent of Sisters of Mercy and a dark melody performed on what sounds a bit like organ in the background; the instrumental “Conversation in Death” is a tango of noisy crunch guitar and repetitive drum loops; “From Darkness We Ride” has gloopy quacking effects (like Donald Duck trying to breathe underwater) that make the song even more deranged than the usual RfR song; and “The Hawk Appears” features a tribal drumming rhythm combined with twanging percussion that gives the track an exotic Oriental feel. The outro title track starts off with an industrial noise loop that lapses into a loping song with the odd spasm of rapid-fire synth drumming and reverbed monster vocal.

In all, this album is a varied one that throws in a number of unusual sound effects and influences and reveals RfR as more than just another eccentric Finnish black metal bunch. Spacey ambient effects can be very subtle and easily missed yet they lift the music to another level just by their presence in the background. It’s a shame that most songs are quite short and very fixated on rhythms; if RfR could let the music soar far into the firmament, they’d end up with something really incredible and no less deranged than what they already do.

Contact: KVLT, Bestial Burst

Carbonscape, Artistry of Exhaustion III, www.carbonscape.bandcomp.com (2012)

Another online ambient offering from Tad Piecka who masterminds the black metal project Petrychor, this follows on from “Artistry of Exhaustion II”, also available online. Whereas that project drew on the sounds of nature, this offering takes on orchestral music, space music and ambient music from the 1990s, according to the website information. On the whole, this seems a calmer if less invigorating release than its predecessor: the music is smoother and less jagged in its delivery but it can be lush in parts. It still has to be heard as loudly as you can tolerate to pick up all the details.

First track “Draw Close, Let Us Sleep” is a peaceful work with soothing long sighing tones and pretty piano trills around the edges. It flows and ebbs throughout and draws the listener into its soft, tranquil world. “Stasis” is another pleasant piece that does what it says, staying static: it’s very quiet, very still at times. The intention is to immerse the listener deep in a meditative state, a state in which s/he can find calm and tranquillity and let the day’s worries melt away. Gradually though a darker mood begins to dominate the track, the air seems to grow chilly and the listener can find him or herself carried helplessly into a blacker, more sinister world.

“Wretched Wretched Liar” is a bit more how I like this kind of dark ambient music from Piecka: it’s not so pretty and can be surprisingly sharp and overwhelming in places, especially in the latter part of the track. It’s extremely quiet when it starts though I sense blustering winds in the background. Hoping that one day Piecka will release this set of three tracks on CD together with “Artistry of Exhaustion II” so that listeners can enjoy the music as it should be enjoyed. ” … Liar” turns out to be very melancholy and full of longing for something dear that is now lost, forever perhaps; the use of orchestral elements gives the track a mournful air and a lush feel.

I must admit I didn’t quite enjoy this work as I did “Artistry of Exhaustion II”: being a digital release doesn’t quite serve the music well here. I suspect on CD it would come across as a more full-bodied collection of music with more volume dynamics; the orchestral parts seem flat. Proof that online music as it is, is missing something that only music released on older formats retains: warmth and atmosphere. Some people might be concerned that kids who listen only to online music might get a warped sense of what music should sound like but with technology changing so quickly, online music must surely improve and it’s difficult to predict how it will influence young people’s music tastes and capacity to hear music.

Contact: Carbonscape

Originally released by the Chain Reaction label in 1996, this reissued album by the Porter Ricks duo (Thomas Köner and Andy Mellwig) still sounds as beguiling and mysterious as it must have done sixteen years ago. Somewhere in my heart a small flame still burns for that Porter Ricks sound even though when I bought a couple of CDs of theirs (one a “versus” duel with Techno Animal) way back in the mid-1990s, I played them so much I tired of their minimalist icy electronic repetition looping routines and strayed into other musical territories. Perhaps if I don’t play this reissue so much I’ll treasure it more; but then it might just get lost in my collection. Anyway, this is a beautifully seductive ambient electronic recording, on par with very early Vladislav Delay recordings of the same period: the overall sound is still cool and controlled but much less forbidding and with a softer, more reassuring edge than what I remember. In each track, the music usually builds up with constant repetition of a motif, subtly changing in texture and mood as it does so, passes its climax without much fuss and descends gracefully (and perhaps wistfully) to its coda. Every piece here seems a natural progression from the previous track to the next and the result is an album that feels very much like a unified work though individual tracks can work very well on their own.

Opener “Port Gentil” is a fairly warm and welcoming piece that brings us gently yet firmly into the Porter Ricks universe and “Nautical Dub” picks up the baton and takes us farther inside with a more urgent rhythm and a definite beat. Squidgy, squelchy rhythms and a bristly texture loop rub up against one another under repeating tones and a pulsing motif on “Biokinetics 1″. “Biokinetics 2″ takes listeners into rather more familiar Thomas Köner territory where the snow lies soft and heavy on the ground and there’s a gentle stillness in the air: beneath the snow and hidden from the air though is the pulsing of a subtle world beyond our senses. The next track is a snappy rhythmic piece where various bobble and other effects do battle against one another in a clinical atmosphere approaching hostility and urgency. (By the way, it’s an interesting exercise playing this album on Windows Media Player on a PC and watching all the patterns, colours, spirals and clouds form and develop and die away into more abstract entities in time to the music: truly Porter Ricks rules the waves here!)

The next couple of tracks – “Port of Nuba” and “Nautical Nuba” – have quite hard monotonous rhythms and are not nearly so atmospheric and subtle as the others. Fortunately the same can’t be said for closing track “Nautical Zone” which without doubt is the best piece here: lush in texture and ambience with a quivering and busy rhythm, an extra layer of thick bubble texture and a gorgeous melodic motif, this has real feeling, warmth and comforting reassurance. Even the patterns on Windows Media Player love this track, dancing and merging and forming anew as the beat pulses (a bit too hard perhaps, that’s the only bad thing here) and the seductive tonal loop leads them and maybe you also into a level deep within this particular sonic universe.

It was a shame this recording was not more widely known in the late 1990s when it was first released – Köner’s reputation as a purveyor of extreme icy isolationist soundscapes might have overshadowed his Porter Ricks work then – but now that dark ambient music has become a familiar friend since and overlaps with many music genres, perhaps this album’s time in the sun has finally arrived.

Contact: Type Recordings

Various Artists, The Very Best of Ethiopiques, UK, Union Square Music Ltd, 2 x CD MantCD245 (2007)

For many years now Buda Musiques has been issuing a highly regarded archival series of CDs of Ethiopian jazz and pop music and the series itself has built up into a rather daunting set that can put off all but the very earnest or fanatical. To make the music more accessible to the general public, this compilation of music from across the series has been made available by Union Square Music Ltd under license from Buda Musiques. The music on offer from these two discs ranges from the soulful and rhythm’n'blues (as it was understood at the time) to big band jazz, choirs and folk, not to mention fusions of the different styles, and most of it dates from the 1970s during a period when the Emperor Haile Selassie was ailing, just before he was overthrown by Colonel Mengistu’s military government in 1974. The new government then cracked down heavily on society with censorship, curfews which killed off nightclubs and the music associated with them, harassment of musicians and other artists, and propaganda against malign outside influences.

Disc 1 contains 14 tracks, most of which are quite good so I’ll just pick out favourite tracks: these are track 4, “Enken Yelelebesh” by Girma Beyene, a dramatic, almost tempestuous song with flamboyant brass arrangements; track 13, Tlahoun Gessesse’s “Tchuheten Betsemu”, an emotive piece with big band backing dominated by blaring saxophone; track 9, Alemayehu Eshete’s “Tchero Adari Negn”, consciously leaning on James Brown for style of vocal delivery and music; and Eshete’s second track following immediately after, “Telantena Zare”, a much lighter and more exuberant piece with heartfelt singing that features a nimble lead guitar solo. These tracks especially seem to capture the spirit of the period: they combine the soul, pop and jazz influences percolating through Ethiopia’s music scene in the mid-1970s and mix optimism and a slight melancholy. On the other hand there are tracks that have me scratching my head as to why they had to be included for they don’t add much to the music overall: one such piece is the bland and heavy-handed “Muziqawi Silt” performed by The Wallias Band.

The music on Disc 2 is slightly less catchy and accessible for Western ears but probably more faithful to the musicians’ Ethiopian heritage. There’s not so much big band music featured and the songs are perhaps more personal and emphasise singing with solo instrumental backing. Singing itself can be very emotional and individual singers’ vocal ranges can border on the virtuosic. Stand-outs include “Bene mote” by Muluqen Mellesse and Dahlak Band for Mellesse’s unearthly yet beautiful androgynous voice; Tlahoun Gessesse’s moody noir piece “Kulun Mankwalesh” with the mysterious piano melody, sinister bongo and Gessesse’s unnaturally ululating vocal in parts; and Getatchew Mekurya’s “Shellela” for Mekurya’s distinctive singing sax style.

I’d like to know how the tracks were selected as there is only one female artist, Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou (Disc 2, track 1), featured and there must have been quite a few female singers in the jazz and pop music scene that flourished briefly in Ethiopia in the early 1970s. There is an information booklet that accompanies the two discs and gives plenty of detail about the careers of the musicians and groups who appear but it says nothing about which parts of the country they hail from so I have no idea if the artists represent most if not all of Ethiopia or only a sub-set of that country’s many ethnic and religious groups.

Nevertheless this set has very invigorating and joyous music, much of which was created in difficult circumstances, and in parts throughout captures the exhilaration that many Ethiopian musicians felt during that short period when artistic and cultural freedom was finally achieved.

Contact: Buda Musique, Union Square Music Ltd

Following its predecessor of the same title, this album continues the style of that other recording: quiet, laconic and minimal in expression yet seeming to say much more than it actually does. The mood is dark and gravid with foreboding in early tracks and admits melancholy and nostalgia for perhaps simpler and more straightforward times in later pieces. On this recording, the Earth core of Dylan Carlson and Adrienne Davies is reunited with cellist Lori Goldston and bassist Karl Blau; I have the impression this will be the last time these four musicians will play as Earth as already Carlson has been reported to have expressed interest in English and Scottish folk music and may pursue that direction in later Earth or solo recordings.

Early pieces “Sigil of Brass” and “His Teeth did Brightly Shine” seem lazy and simple, and feature almost abstract dapples of guitar tone and stark string melodies respectively against a sombre atmosphere as backdrop. The mood is very concentrated and intense. Yes, the music may be repetitive but the intent is to immerse you in the music and the universe it’s drawing up around you, the tones and melodies painting the details of the dark cosmos that will envelop you.

“A Multiplicity of Doors” brings in Davies’s sparing and hushed percussion and introduces Goldston’s mournful cello accompaniment to Carlson’s guitar, the two falling into a slow and stately dance. The cello seems to add a smoky feel to the music and there’s a definite epic movie-soundtrack vibe that makes you think this album would be just perfect for a film based on one of US writer Cormac MacCarthy’s novels. The musicians build up the track very slowly as if in a soporific trance, gently casting a veil of hot, dry desert atmosphere over you. As the track progresses, the cello’s melody just manages to stay on the right side of being deranged – but only just! – as the musicians navigate through a sequence of bluesy notes and the occasional slightly flattened key and appear to go over the same path and pass the same mesas and buttes in the desert along the way. I swear the band’s sound becomes fuller and more three-dimensional but that could be my mind playing tricks on me.

“The Corascene Dog” has a pleasant enough melody but compared to what’s gone by and what’s to come suffers as a filler track that gives a bit of respite between heavyweights. It’s quite bright and has a hopeful ambience in places. Outro track “The Rakehell” has a strong, moody retro-1970s feel with Blau’s bass guitar playing around the edges of Carlson’s guitar and Davies’s drums cranking out the main repetitive riff loop. Frail strings of lead guitar in the background add depth and textural variation to the track.

It’s not necessary to know the previous “Angels of Darkness …” album; this follow-up is actually a better work than the first in my opinion. The music insistently pulls you into its interior world and once there, you marvel at the wide open spaces and moods of the tough, dry landscapes around you. The intense and concentrated emotion of the music may surprise you.

Contact: Southern Lord