Slightly unusual team-up on From The Longest Winter (ZOHARUM ZOHAR 292-2), from the Italian Nimh and the Polish Fomalhaut. Giuseppe Verticchio has been making his own electronic music since the mid-1990s, collaborated with Bianchi and others, covering a wide range of genres and sub-genres and published by many labels, either under his own name or his Nimh alias, and in collaborative projects Biasthon, Hall Of Mirrors, Lham, Maribor, Timelines, Twist Of Fate, and We Promise To Betray. Matter of fact Zoharum compiled some of his early works on the double CD Caustic / Composite in 2022 (noted by Jen here). In contrast to the prolific Italian fellow, Tomasz Borowski doesn’t have a huge discography as such, but has been a journalist for Apostazja magazine.
All seven of these wordless instrumentals refer impressionistically to things like weather, the environment, and the gradual passing of day into night and back again; the key themes are mostly to do with “emotion” and “atmosphere”, and the two creators saw the album as a chance to build up a dialogue between each other, exploring the conversation to find where it would lead them. Mostly bleak and cold dark ambient tones result, fogged-up and vague drifting shapes sometimes anchored by an uncertain mechanical beat. I prefer the moments where it’s almost completely abstract, but one of our two musicians can’t resist picking up an electric guitar and attempting to play “tunes” with long extended notes and much digital delay, thus ruining the mood with their banal interjections. (28/06/2023)