Four items from the Polish Zoharum label.
Uhushuhu is the duo of Pavel Drombrowski and Lilia Akivenson. Zvirat (ZOHAR 307-2) is their second release for this label after Drones & Bones from 2017. The duo layer a tremendous number of instruments, including synthesisers, guitar, woodwinds, studio effects, field recordings, and found sounds – with Akivenson enhancing the atmospheric mood with her near-abstract photography of images from nature. When I say “atmospheric”, it’s something of a relief to report that Zvirat is largely free from the pessimistic doom-laden emotions which trouble many releases on this label, and at their best Uhushuhu manage to edge a bit closer to the ambiguous responses which they hope to elicit through their music. However, be prepared for very slow-moving layered drones, with no guarantee that the general dynamic is going to alter much over the course of their duration. The 18:39 minutes of ‘Uroboros’ might be particularly testing on that account, but it also has an impression of the sickly dawn light of a sunrise which jars slightly; me, I prefer the dead-of-night meanderings promised by ‘Breg’ or ‘Chashchoba’, where the fevered mind of the insomniac can be led into many strange delusions.
The Stargazer’s Assistant are one of the few non-Polish acts represented on this label, but their music undoubtedly fits well with the overall flavour of the Zoharum catalogue. I think the group began as a solo vehicle for David J. Smith, the percussionist from Guapo, and it was his music we noted on Mirrors & Tides, Shivers & Voids, a 2019 bundle of earlier releases. For today’s item Fire Worshipper (ZOHAR 311-2) we also have Michael J. York (sometime member of Coil) and David J. Knight from UnicaZurn; this lineage might tempt the listener to bracket the Stargazers in the same esoteric area as both those bands, and of course Cyclobe, but the record is more about a shared common interest between the three players, and an interest in expressing it “in the form of a dialogue”, selon the press release. If the dates are correct, the process of realising these works took them several years, starting in 2016 and ending in 2021. The music struck me as a little insubstantial on early spins, but there is a lot of delicacy and care in the way that these layers of percussion, chanting voices, and drones have been selected and assembled. It’s arguable their formula works best on long tracks like ‘Shalman’, but the shorter episodes do offer fascinating glimpses of the supernatural worlds which these three believe they can perceive, hopefully using scrying glasses and obsidian mirrors. The track titles are all names of fire gods, or fire-related agencies, drawn from many cultures and many time periods. Yet, to this band, the element of fire is neither hot nor quick, instead manifesting as a slow-burning flame of blue ice.
Time Frost (ZOHAR 308-2) is another Rapoon reissue, this time of a 2007 item originally released by the Italian label Glacial Movements, the natural home of “ice” themed ambient music. Robin Storey has tried to imagine, in sound, what it’s like to be frozen in ice and transformed into another form over the course of several thousand years, perhaps fantasising about perfectly-preserved frozen woolly mammoths and other such prehistoric specimens. Quite good actually; Rapoon can sometimes overwhelm us with too many overdubs in his swirling mixes, but this one has a minimalistic open-ended structure and a light touch which is very refreshing. The repeated figures which sometimes hove out of the mist reminded us of The Disintegration Loops by William Basinski, and Rapoon is not averse to evoking a similar air of melancholy. It was made using samples of the ‘Blue Danube’ composed by Strauss, lifted from the 2001 soundtrack album. Ironically, the composer’s original intention was to warn us about an imminent new ice age, as a result of global warming.
Speaking of reissues, here’s Vidna Obmana with Crossing The Trail (ZOHAR 312-2), originally released in 1998 by Projekt in the USA. The prolific Belgian creator overdubs his flutes, percussion, and loops with much programming, with the help of extra electronics from the Californian Steve Roach, Jeff Pearce who provided guitar loops, and Martina Verhoeven who chants on some tracks. Listeners who are more devoted than I, we are told, could appreciate this album as a stepping stone between The River of Appearance and The Surreal Sanctuary, and if all these records express a continuity of some sort, it may have to do with making a metaphysical journey across unknown zones. But when Vidna Obmana makes a journey, he never seems to progress, or to arrive; his work often seems to lack tension for me, and even the continual loops of chugging percussion somehow fail to propel the music anywhere. The ubiquitous droning sounds have been over-processed, recycled and manipulated too many times, somehow draining the life out of the sources.
All the above from 24 January 2024.