Lull
Journey Through Underworlds
UK COLD SPRING RECORDS CSR329CD (2024)
Still in the dark ambient realms, and likewise very severe and heavy (see previous post), is this weighty offering from Mick Harris. It’s a straight reissue, now remastered and with new artwork by Abby Helsadottir, of the 1993 album originally released on John Everall’s Sentrax label (and on Rawkus in the US).
Lull was one of many ambient creators (along with the not-unrelated Scorn) who I first heard on the excellent Ambient 4: Isolationism compilation made by Kevin Martin for Virgin Records, a release that’s been an essential guide to building an informal collection for me personally. Over the course of some 30 years, Journey Through Underworlds has grown in status in the culture to emerge as a definitive sound-portrait of Hades, a popular theme which is often embraced by many such droners, be they attempting to restate the poetry of Dante in some way (e.g. Vida Obmana’s Dante Trilogy), or are simply enthusiasts of all things dark and diabolical. It’s reinforced even more explicitly by the new artwork here, with its Cabbalistic symbols and evocation of the Nine Circles. Lull’s take on the netherworld does contain sonic clues which some wide-eyed reviewers have wasted no time in translating back into suitably menacing imagery of confinement and despair, all of which is very plausible. But the source material itself remains very abstract, cold, and stern, as if Lull were working hard to refuse any possible external associations with reality, and denying imagistic impressions.
It seems the original 1993 pressing, manufactured by PDO, is now suffering from bronzing (or disc rot), making this reissue – sourced from Mick Harris’ original recordings, we are informed – all the more welcome. (12/04/2024)