Having taken in more of SiJ's music since my first dabbling last year, I'm surprised he's ended up with a couple albums on Cryo Chamber. For sure his style of dark ambient and sonic experiments works within the label's overall manifesto (cinematic drone, and all that), but his sense of sombre melancholy feels more benign than this genre typically goes. He's less about the bleak outlook and crippling depression, and more about quiet contemplation, reflective of inner struggles rather than chaotic turmoil. Or perhaps it's music capturing the moments following the strife, of accepting complacency, the calm of clarity that comes when all hope is finally lost. Not a cheering thought.
Still, that leaves Mr. Sikach in good company with his latest pairing, Item Caligo. More of a modern classical composer, with distant pianos and crackly strings his most striking features, he's released numerous albums with such reflective titles like The Night Of Escapism, Self-Deception As Rescue, and Go Away, I Want To Sleep. Even more intriguing is a one-time collaboration with a chap named 'i want to be dead' called Lifelong Suicidal Thoughts. According to Lord Discogs, that individual also goes by, Waqs, Serializer, Amen Weed, amphetamine hysteria, Freak Bwoy, 'born to be buried in the grave', I Cry When I Think Of Past, 'my family members were awful so i killed them in a particularly brutal form', and DJ Sailor Moon, among numerous others. I'm not joking.
Sorry for the side-track. Let's get to Queer Reminiscence, an album with song titles like So Terrible To Contemplate, Her Soul Involuntarily Yearned For Rest, It Was Good To Destroy Once Again, Life Loves Your Pain, and a final, fourteen-minute minimalist drone closer called Oblivion Is The Reward Of The Former. Yeah, it's one of those kinds of albums. All aboard the mope-mobile!
Heh, no, not really. Queer Reminiscence does have its brooding tones, but as mentioned, SiJ's craft with this music is often the sort of melancholy that feels strangely warm and comforting, like the embrace of an old, familiar blanket, even as you stare out a frigid window pane into a grey winter landscape. Add in Item Caligo's modern classical touches, and you have yourself an album perfectly suited for those with acute cases of SADS (*cough*). The titular track features forlorn pad work gently ebbing with layers of timbre, Her Soul Involuntarily Yearned For Rest is a soothing piece of traditional ambient, while If Our Hope Not Fades lets Item Caligo indulge the ol' ivories some - I'm assuming, since it's his thing.
Really, Queer Reminiscence mostly sounds like an Item Caligo album, with SiJ providing sonic treatments and field recordings. There's little of the dark ambient that typically keeps him in those folds, the music here more of a modern classical outing with drone tendencies. Good mood music, all said.
(PS: Vincent Villuis gets a 'samples credit' here, which can only mean, eventually, Ultimae's gonna' go dark ambient too!)
ACE TRACKS:
Queer Reminiscence
Her Soul Involuntarily Yearned For Rest
It Was Good To Destroy Once Again
Ссылка на оригинал
