The name of Abby Helasdottir has appeared on numerous Cold Spring releases with credits for the visual side of this particular label – layouts, art direction, graphic design and artworks…notably, she did a beautiful cover for the Sun Ra / Merzbow thing in 2016, and more recently for the Merzbow / Meat Beat Manifesto team-up.
Now she’s made a whole album under the name Bestia Astrum (which shouldn’t surprise us too much, as she’s also released not a few records as Gydja in New Zealand since 2001). Fury 161 (COLD SPRING CSR342CD) is an imaginative sonic reinterpretation of / homage to the third Alien movie. Well, we all love David Fincher’s cinema, and while this film didn’t quite ignite my “Nostromo” as some of the others in the series, I do vaguely remember it was set on a “prison planet” – its name, Fury 161, didn’t register on my weary retinas however. Bestia Astrum has realised a whole widescreen production in miniature with this release – not just the dark ambient “soundscapes”, but a gorgeous digipak presentation and an entire full-colour booklet with resonant images, a text story, and references / footnotes appended to the text. Even the track titles indicate she has a very narrative structure in mind, each track a chapter in a story. Not so much a music album, as an array of sound effects and atmospheres, which while extremely vivid and convincing, also remain ambiguous and open-ended, allowing the diligent listener to project their own nightmarish images onto the ponderous, solemn sonics.
Speaking of solemn, she’s reinstated the subtext of “space monks living on a wooden planet” which was something conceived by Vincent Ward (one of the three writers credited with the screenplay) as part of the original movie; this is apparently one of many “treatments”, if you’ll forgive the lapse into Hollywood-speak, that didn’t make it past the discussion stages. I think it’s good that Helasdottir is engaged enough to bring in these space monks, although I admit I can’t quite make out the “motifs of eremitic religiosity” that are promised by the press blurb. There are some brief vocal segments here and there which add a dash of piquancy, though it’s not clear if they are direct samples of dialogue from the soundtrack.
Certainly feeling the oppressive “weight” of this talented creator’s take on the dark ambient genre – at times a fellow can barely breathe in the claustrophobic zones concocted in her digital studio – but somewhere Fury 161 is lacking in dramatic action or concrete events. It’s a bit like exploring an expensive movie set without a single actor in sight to spoil the view, let alone a xenomorph running through the tunnels in search of prey. (10/02/2025)