Category: Music reviews

There’s something about the idea of a split release that evokes in me a sense of heartfelt nostalgia. I can’t help but be overcome with the same feeling that I got as a teenager, buying punk rock split 7″ singles from the only store in the area that deigned to carry such things back in those days. It’s a strange feeling that I can’t quite explain, but it always inspires in me a desire to release a split of my own.

mystified Versus Seism is a split release featuring (obviously) mystified and Seism. I first ran into Thomas Park, of mystified, a little over a decade ago, and have been following his efforts ever since, but I wasn’t familiar with Seism, so I was going into this half-blind. The results were pleasantly surprising. The release itself is fairly long, with the shortest track clocking in at just over 15 minutes, but there are few passages where you feel as though things are dragging along needlessly. Seism’s dark and organic ambient complements mystified’s trademark abstractions, the former lending weight to the loftiness of the latter. “Birds On A Wire” may be the album’s weakest moment, as the length of the track becomes tedious, but the experience is saved with the random collage of sampled sound that opens “Language Of The Universe”; a beautifully restrained exhibition of haunting atmosphere. The album closes with “Edge Of The River”, a relaxing field recording of running water.

A great split and introduction to Seism, who I will be tracking down in the near future.

[Rating:3.5/5]

Chthonium’s Hades Project is a sparse, low-key dark ambient effort. The album opens with an organic glistening that conjures up images of rattling metal sheets, and promptly establishes a solid foundation for the mood of the remaining tracks. Sounds seemingly dredged, with an exquisite softness, from an ethereal darkness hunker low creating a sense of vast emptiness crushing down from above. The sparse nature of the tracks don’t lend themselves to fading into the background, but rather to creating their own space; a space upon space within which these whispers dwell.

Keep an eye out for the curious tagging of the second track…

[Rating:3.5/5]

With a subtleness that is not soothing, yet never deigns to be bold or harsh, nightech’s field carriers is a more traditional dark ambient undertaking. Dark washes of sound underpin the lilt of atonal synth noodlings, invoking imagery of bubbling depths and creatures of subterranean origin. I find myself wanting for aggression, as the darkness of the tracks seems blunted by their lack of edge. Otherwise, a great dark ambient album for a more relaxed mood.

[Rating:3.5/5]

Live @ Pauanne, recorded in Pauanne Finland on July 17, 2004, captures the very first live performance of longtime experimental electronic artist, Ihokas. The minimal set opens with a languid, almost innocuous, thudding pulse that lumbers nearly unchallenged for the first ten minutes of the performance, gradually taking on a vaguely sinister feel before fading into the subtle dirge of a soft, low melody. Slowly introduced to this are deep electronic murmurs and jarringly abrasive microphone manipulations, which persist as the melody fades into the shadows from which the closing movement’s mumbles, whirrs and clashes have emerged.

To call this performance restrained would be an understatement. Ihokas demonstrates remarkable patience and mastery over the elements he has employed in this piece, creating a phenomenal live performance.

[Rating:4.5/5]

Six decades walking this planet can give a person much material from which to draw. That is precisely the concept behind Dust’s Six. Sixty years of soaking up the noise of human living has been regurgitated in this series of six tracks, featuring snippets of harsh distorted beats, minimal synthesized drones and shakuhachi. The disparate sounds are agglomerated into a strangely homogeneous, though not repetitive, collection. While some elements work better than others, the overall experience is one that I can only hope to duplicate when I have six decades under my own belt.

[Rating:3.5/5]