More strangeness from the strange dimension that is Aesthetic Death, definitely one of the most adventurous labels out there. This time we have a collaboration between Ord (sole member Ord Err) and Demonologists (Cory Rowell, Evan Price) both I guess dark ambient/noise creators with electronics, instruments and a healthy selection of field recordings woven and layered.
Split into eight Ceremony parts, this album starts by opening a door into a dark, quiet place. Electronic sounds wander and waver as sounds which might be subterranean whisper and step. It is both isolating and disorientating, but enveloping like a smoke, drug laced haze. It is like opening your eyes but finding just the absence of light as things begin to take shape. There is a purpose here though and as the ritual gong and the drum begin to anchor the place, to gather the will and the intent maybe. To softly but persistently work at thinning the veil.
I find this sound cavern to be strangely comforting. It is a dark sound, yes, it seems to be attempting to reach beyond into places but the sounds, the drumming and the gong and the curious, almost wet scraping sounds fill me with little immediate sense of malevolence. Simply intent, exploration, purpose. If not exactly gentle there is at least a calmness. There is little sense of force. This feels more akin to communication, the attempt to speak to somewhere else. Something other. You are party to a conversation in a language that at first you don’t understand but the soft persistence of the rhythmic ritual sounds slowly focusses your mind and you begin to feel the flow of the discourse.
But something clearly lurks as we edge into the final ceremony, a darker presence. It brings an air of danger to the ceremony without doubt. Is this what we wished to speak with or simply and intruder? A risk of the psychonautical exploration or the great revelation? I’ll leave that for you to discover.
Often when reviewing ambient works of one style or another I talk about ‘direction of travel’, when an album is an exploration the music needing to take you on its journey and show the changing landscape as you pass through. And when there is no direction of travel I feel… left behind. Not included. This album, however is one of the exceptions to the rule. The album feels static to me but far, far from stagnant or keeping me outside. Quite the reverse in fact. It takes its time through the layering of sound recordings and the juxtaposition of the instruments to show me the place where the ritual is being enacted and gives me time and the opening to settle into to it and allow the music and sound to draw me into the conversation.
This is both a most relaxing album and possessed of an undeniable touch of unease of facing the unknown and the uncanny as it is slowly revealed through the ceremony. It speaks to the skills of the artists that it kept me enthralled and intrigued throughout and for anyone who enjoys dark ambient and ritual music this is an album you should eagerly hunt out.
(8.5/10 Gizmo)
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