Sometimes I wonder why I make things so hard for myself as a reviewer, other times I know. It’s the latter case here, really. Paysage D’Hiver are a name that has been on my peripheral vision for three or four years but as there are only so many albums you can check out in a week they’ve remained there until this cropped up and I thought ‘maybe it’s time.’
For those uninitiated Paysage D’Hiver are a project of Wintherr, one half of the founding partnership of legendary black metal ambient band Darkspace. So at least you know it will be quality even if it doesn’t gel with you. Beyond that I hadn’t much of a clue beyond reviews. Even then I was a little taken aback when I realise this album is over one hundred and five minutes long. Which actually is only their second longest… Anyway, multiple playthroughs are still required so I cleared my week.
So the impossible task of describing this work in less than five hundred words.
‘Urgrund’ opens at first with sounds of cold winds and subterranean atmosphere echoing slowly before the slow, buzzing, deeply and bitterly cold riff begins in the background. It has a perfect, eerie melody. Menacing but in an almost impersonal way. It simply is. Speed is picked up and the music is pushed to the front. Harsh vocals, almost subliminal, prowl around. You can feel the influence of early Burzum here for sure, but there is so much more laid up than that. The intensity creeps up on you; the winding of pressure from the relentless riff and drumming and the encircling keyboards. It is full of primal power, that sense of dread of a place rather than something directed at your presence. This sense of both winter bound and cosmic darkness has not been roused for your benefit, this darkness simply is the nature of this place.
Stepping away for a moment, what is frankly remarkable is that with ostensibly a simple sound for nearly twenty minutes, this opening passage never drags or drifts. It has so many subtle shifts in tempo, so many curves to the melody or the vocals that it feels turbulent. A snow storm, night, high mountains… something just beyond.
It really is masterful.
The remaining six passages are crafted with equal care. There are shifts in atmosphere, tempo and feel but all move with the same commanding presence. There is something indomitable within this album. It is pitch black and bitterly cold, yes, but as it moves you can see the layers. Sometimes the drums step up and you are pushed into a powerful vortex, other times the keyboards sweep a cold, smooth layer over the roaring, rumbling heart. But it remains relentless, intense and towers above you, around you.
But over a hundred minutes? One and three quarters of an hour?
And there’s the strange, inhuman thing to this album. It doesn’t drag, it doesn’t feel repetitive. It flows and swerves and is utterly relentless but somehow the composition and performance never make me want to leave. I want to stand and stare in awe at the forces the music conjures even as it strips me to the bone with its icy force.
Maybe it isn’t for everyone, but for me and I hope many others this is just a dark monumental work that is worth every minute you spend transfixed at its heart. Frankly I’m a little in awe of what Wintherr has done here.
(9/10 Gizmo)
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