I don’t know of this particular project before I received this, but the description that went with is intriguing: “Doomjazz mercilessly mixed with the ambience of Black Metal, Gregorian soprano singing juxtaposed with unholy cavernous screams”. It’s all inspired by the penitential psalm 51, apparently. The composer behind it is Jason Köhnen, known for Bong-Ra, Celestial Season and others.

“Opus I – Occulta” starts with the sombre tones of a church, but rasping vocals are creeping through the distortion. The melancholic and sinister tones of the saxophone peer through the mist. In the background there is a hissing drone. It is the stuff of nightmares. A piercing roar emerges. The symphonic and harshly experimental gloom close the piece. The saxophone whistles in the fetid wind as “Opus II – Domine” represents a series of funereal sounds, with the odd insertion of swampy vocal. It is the sound of tragedy, especially what sounds like a double bass and the saxophone letting out slow notes which drift away into the cold wind. An operatic soprano female voice raises the bar on the equally gloomy “Opus III – Sanctum” but again the ambience arises from the cavernous winds and breathing, and the jazzy distortions of the saxophone. “Opus IV – Sacrificium” is a slow dirge, dominated by the operating lady before it is time for the hissing vocalist to come crawling out of the swamp with all manner of menace. By “Opus V Humiliatum”, the heavy-breathing, hissing vocalist is out there, and accompanying the jazz-like experimentations from the saxophone in a stiflingly black atmosphere. More interesting is the hymn which starts the final piece of the sextet, “Opus VI – Libera”, on account of the fact that it is distorted but quickly we are back in church and listening to another gloomy, slow dirge which the lady sings with purity before the inhospitable drone takes it slowly away.

I can’t think I’ve listened to anything as miserable as this in a long time. I acknowledge the creativity and wrist-slashingly gloomy ambience of this work, and perhaps unsurprisingly I found it utterly depressing and hard-going. So it lives up to its name, the doomjazz musicianship is just that, and whilst I don’t expect music to be pleasant or joyous and this certainly isn’t, this was a trial to listen to.

(6/10 Andrew Doherty)

https://thelovecraftsextet.bandcamp.com/album/miserere