Another fine set of dark alienating drones from Sonologyst, i.e. the Italian wide-eyed fanatic Raffaele Pezzella who also runs the Unexplained Sounds Group.
We very much enjoyed his Silencers for its suggestions of Cold War conspiracy undercurrents and its follow-up Ancient Death Cults and Beliefs, with its hints of rites and ceremonies of non-Western early cultures. Today’s record Interdimensional (COLD SPRING RECORDS CSR305CD) is intended as the last part of this particular series, and on this occasion our man turns his vague and fuzzy notions in a generally “cosmic” direction, musing about alien life, outer galaxies, other dimensions, possible futures for the human race, and travelling through multiverses with the ease of a science-fiction astronaut who beholds all reflected in the black visor of his helmet. In order to lend some semblance of credibility to his far-fetched and wispy ideas, Sonologyst invokes the work of Dr Michio Kaku, an American physicist who was one of the co-founders of String Theory, but also a writer who has speculated about various possible and impossible futures, known and unknown dimensions, and similar subjects – the sort of bold thinking that has a wide appeal to many. There’s also a quote printed here in the digipak, allegedly drawn from a 1947 FBI report about the growing extra-terrestrial “problem” in the United States, and it alludes to the rather intriguing idea of an “etheric planet”, implying that these unknown visitors are so imperceptible to our senses that they somehow manage to vibrate their way into earthly matter; this is how their spaceships appear, and how they inhabit our bodies.
These impressionistic images are reflected on the CD, mostly in the very evocative titles Sonologyst has assigned to his synthetic drones – ‘Through memories and galaxies’ is a particularly poetic phrase, I’d say – whereas the music is so incredibly non-specific that it could almost be applied to almost anything. But this is doubtless a deliberate tactic by the creator; I think he’s trying to tell the story from the point of view of these aliens, or inter-dimensional beings, and using his nebulous, textured emissions to evoke the way they warp themselves through space and time, and merge their being into whatever convenient receptacle they may encounter on this endless cosmic journey. I do kinda miss the edgy paranoia I heard on Silencers, but to compensate for that I think there’s a powerful vibratory force lurking inside Interdimensional; what may appear to be low-key, processed ambient greyness may contain many secret meanings, if we could only find the key to decipher them. If played loudly, you might feel the cells of your body start to disintegrate thus allowing the unknown “presence” to smush aside your vital organs as it inhabits your corporeal husk.
Fave track happens to be afore-mentioned ‘Through memories and galaxies’, by dint of its mesmerising length at 14:32 mins, and its use of sampled spoken-word which is both barely audible and impossible to understand; a well-worn trope perhaps (just ask anyone in Schloss Tegal, or Simon Balestrazzi) but even so it works for me every time. From 16 May 2022.