I got into the strange dark world of Haiku Funeral through Thee Ed’s reviews on these pages and a generous gesture from Aesthetic Death owner Stu some while back. They are not easy music but their progression has been wonderful and unnerving all rolled up together. Due to my own incompetence I was unaware until recently that the duo (one France based, one US I think) were also in a full blown black metal band Corpus Diavolis – another band I need to investigate. Horthordox I know even less about beyond he is a Russian gent. And the lyrics here were inspired by Bulgarian folk tales. Judging by this Bulgarian folk tales are the stuff of nightmares…

It’s always a difficult job reviewing music like this for me. A track by track breakdown doesn’t give the feel here as, like much of this dark noise/ambient/ritual music very much needs to be listened to as a whole.

Haunting, almost horn sounds or a tortured saxophone rise out of the keyboard mist. A strange whining sound threads through the background as keyboards begin to darken and swell to surround the bleak proto-jazz sax sounds. There’s a little touch of the kind of darkness Lustmord’s seminal ‘Heresy’ album brought, some rattling keys and then garbled, almost bubbling vocals distorted and oppressive bleed into the mix. It is ponderous but relentless, the prevalent saxophone sounds twisting into discordance, the sound of a vortex of vocals and keyboards periodically.

There are distinct breaks between the six tracks on here, which despite my words above does isolate them in a manner, but it is the overall feel that stays with you. The second passage ‘The Mother And The Whore-Bride’ whose title reminds me of a song on the debut Miska Boba album which I gather is a common tale in parts of Eastern Europe, is more sparse, almost skeletal. It relies heavily for the most part on those saxophone sounds and vocals with a distortion like the sound of a needle passing over a warped vinyl album before becoming more and more mangled in a ripped, twisted swirl of noise.

But what do you glean from this as you delve deeper into the album? It’s one of the more tricky ones to be sure. It tends to the bleak and minimalist – vocals twisted beyond comprehension (and printed in Cyrillic on the digipak kindly provided, so I’m none the wiser), discordant sax, creeping synths and with such a canvas this is not music to be left on, oddly. This has to be listened to if you wish to receive anything from it. It will not reach out and pull you in, more it expects you to engage with little insistence on its part. This does not make it bad, or dull, simply another layer of difficulty when dealing with it. Concentration is required and with an hour or so of music this is a challenge. I’m not going to lie; on repeated listens there were times when my mind drifted along the surface of the music rather than along a path towards its heart which I found a problem. And yet it is constructed with care and a deeply intelligent guiding hand and when it does snare you (like in a rhythmic section of the title track) it is quite mesmerising.

I think I’m still a little on the fence with this one. What this is and how it has been composed is excellent, however I’m more unsure about the impact or influence that it exudes. It is certainly music for a certain mood, but how often that mood will come upon you is unknown.

But still, it is one to sample and see.

(7/10 Gizmo)

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https://www.aestheticdeath.com/releases.php?mode=singleitem&albumid=6248