Mit SiJ kommt einer der Hoffnungsträger aus der Ukraine, was den Bereich des Dark/Drone Ambient betrifft. Verbergen tun sich dahinter ein gewisser Vladislav Sikach und eine gewisse Alena Perepadya, die uns mittels "Influence Of Darkness" einen Trip zum äußersten Punkt der Nacht versprechen und dies in fünf Kompositionen zu bewerkstelligen versuchen.
Помните бородатые анекдоты про вкручивание лампочки в разных составах? А теперь вопрос на засыпку. Сколько нужно гудельщиков, чтобы записать очередную пластинку про Ктулху? Правильный ответ – дохренища. Cryo Chamber Collaboration, своего рода команда мира по дарк эмбиенту и смежным дисциплинам, утверждает, что участников в «дрим тиме» заиграно как будто 25 – но пойти сосчитай точно. Как подсказывает само название, это сборная всех звёздочек тёмно-гудельной сферы с лейбла Cryo Chamber. Значком этим заправляет Саймон Хит, неумеренно плодородный автор Atrium Carceri, Krusseldorf и Sabled Sun. Неукротимо урожайный, как и всякий уважающий себя графоман, Хит с некоторых пор взялся за издательское дело и наладился штамповать гулкие шедевры младшего поколения.
A 190 minute dark soundscape album recorded by 25 ambient artists to pay tribute to H.P. Lovecraft. Field recordings from the deepest dark corners of 4 continents. Dusty tapes out of forgotten archives. Strings through crackling amplifiers and distorted drone combine into a sea of pitch black. Nyarlathotep is a manipulative being in the Lovecraftian Mythos. Unlike Cthulhu, or Azathoth, he delights in cruelty and deception. Causing madness is more important than destruction to him. Smell the burning embers as you kneel outside the sunken temple before Nyarlathotep. Feel the raspy touch of the faceless pharaoh as he leads you to the ancient Pyramid. Hear his inhuman summoning call to gods beyond reality.
As a bit of a Lovecraft scholar, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Cryo Chamber had elected to dedicate the third (and presumably last) entry in their series of Lovecraftian collaborative releases of dark ambient music to Nyarlathotep. After a slightly aimless and underwhelming tribute to Cthulhu, things seemed more focused on the second release, a suitably cosmic and impassive homage to the blind idiot god Azathoth. Nyarlathotep, the closest thing Lovecraft’s mythos has to a trickster god, seemed to me both a richer source of inspiration and a trickier entity to sonically conjure. The only of Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones to take an active interest in humanity, Nyarlathotep is both beyond human ken and an active meddler in our affairs. That’s a delicate balance to strike, but the Cryo Chamber roster manages to offer up a three-hour opus both worthy of the Black Pharaoh’s mercurial nature and the brand of dark ambient the label’s come to represent.
Cryo Chamber definitely appears to be under the influence of H.P. Lovecraft. The label already released the “Cthulhu”-collaboration featuring several label artists working together and achieving a great opus. “Nyarlathotep” is a new collaboration between an impressive number of label formations. The story is about ‘A season of political and social upheaval. Mankind felt as if the world was at a breaking point, but no one wanted to speak of this. Seasons grew hotter. Our faith in the known gods faltered. The timing was ripe for the arrival of Nyarlathotep.’
Few things leave me speechless, very few things. Dark ambient has a certain ability to do that to me more than any other genre of music. By now, listening to dark ambient releases for well over two years, I thought I had heard the best I was going to hear. That’s not a knock on things to come but rather a presumption I made based on the extremely high quality of the albums which I had heard. Then came Nyarlathotep. That opinion melted away when I heard Cryo Chamber’s latest collaborative album. Third in a series (following Cthulhu and Azathoth), Nyarlathotep clocks in at a behemoth 190 minutes. That’s not a typo. Nyarlathotep is a massive three songs, three-hour opus and believe me every single minute is worth it.
Cryo Chamber has released a giant with this one. In order to fully appreciate what it is, and how it came about, a bit of history is in order. If this isn't your thing, or you already know, just skip down to the third paragraph. One of the early crowning achievements on Cryo Chamber was the collaboration album Cthulhu. Cryo Chamber delved into a concept which had its fair share of musical interpretations. They came at this concept from a different angle than many had attempted in the past. Simon Heath of Atrium Carceri, Sabled Sun, and owner of Cryo Chamber, surrounded himself with a dozen dark ambient artists, most from Cryo Chamber. Through the power of the internet, they all contributed to a vast library of sounds. Each artist had the reign to pull sounds from one another as they pleased. This allowed them to create their own piece of the story, without becoming disjointed.
Mit der immensen Spieldauer von über drei Stunden schlägt die folgende Publikation zu Buche, welche unter dem Banner von Cryo Chamber ihre Verbreitung findet. Wie der Titel bereits verrät, so handelt es sich dabei nicht um das Resultat eines einzelnen Künstlers, sondern vielmehr um eine Zusammenarbeit, an welcher nicht weniger als 25 Musiker beteiligt sind. Hochkarätige Namen wie etwa Metatron Omega, Svartsinn, Atrium Carceri und Northumbria sind zu finden, die hier ihren Tribut an H.P. Lovecraft zollen, dem wohl mit einflussreichstem Autor im Horrormysterium.
"Perseides" is the second ethnographical aural journey by Vladislav Sikach (aka SiJ) and Sergey Gabbasov on the Swedish Gterma label. This time around, the continuous, almost 80-minute outcome is a blend 12 tracks, all travelling on the mystery road to places far away in the Mongol region.
Оказывается, иногда в путешествиях во времени и пространстве нет ничего сложного: нужна лишь «работающая» на эти цели музыка, правильная атмосфера и немного воображения. Для тех, кто готов отправиться в странствие по древнему Тибету, пройти по Шелковому пути и заглянуть в самые отдаленные и овеянные тайнами уголки Гималаев, я настоятельно рекомендую совместный альбом Владислава Сикача (SIJ) и Сергея Габбасова «Zhang Zhung». Шанг-Шунг – древнее королевство Тибета, в состав которого также входили территории Индии, Ирана и Средней Азии.
Let me say that I do enjoy SiJ’s Way to Dream. Or, I try to enjoy it when it’s not busy drenching me in theme. There’s a lot of water sounds, nature sounds, various clatters and thumps and maybe some rain on the roof type things, and in among a fairly relentless assault of them, Vladislav Sikach tucks in some piano work and soft ambient passages. He imports an impressive number of sound sources (which he refers to as “provided materials”) that range from duduk and singing bows to dumbek and singing glass. For me, if some of the atmospherics had been judiciously left off, Way to Dream would be a much more immersive album.
Many of these Cryo Chamber CDs I’m reviewing were procured thanks to the label’s spiffy bulk deals, but not this one. With Reflections Under The Sky, I snatched that up the moment it was announced, getting my hardcopy right off the factory line. Was it because I was a die-hard fan of one SiJ or Textere Oris? Had I been so completely won over by Cryo Chamber’s dark oeuvre that I simply had to shell out for every new release? Ah, not quite the case.
The other cassette by Lamour Records is perhaps a bit of an oddball for this label, which for me always hints towards pop. It is a compilation with drone music from the Ukraine, as compiled by Dao de Noize (of whom we reviewed music before). Two cassettes, twice eighty minutes equals a lot of drone music by lots of people I never heard of