Randal Collier-Ford, Flowers For Bodysnatchers, Council Of Nine, God Body Disconnect - Locus Arcadia

Cryo Chamber: 2016

Scaling back from the super-mega-ultra concept of ‘ALL The Roster Work On Singular Label Project’, we have ‘A Few Guys On Label Work On Concept Album’. Not under a group pseudonym though, nor with any specific collaboration between each artist beyond working around the theme as laid out by Bruce Moallem (God Body Disconnect). Cryo Chamber's done something similar as this before, an album called Tomb Of Empires, and I can’t help but continuously marvel at how much creative freedom Simon Heath offers all these morbid musicians from across the globe. Still, despite each contributor providing a single (long) track to Locus Arcadia, this is more than a compilation. Applying the trusty ol’ ‘dark ambient as storytelling’ analogy, each piece is rather like a short story set within a specific setting, though whether we’re dealing with the same protagonist throughout, I’m not sure.

Locus Arcadia is the brain-child of Bruce Moallem, whose backstory I’ve detailed in the God Body Disconnect album Dredge Portals. Along for the ride is Council Of Nine, one Maximillion Olivier, whom I’ve also detailed to some degree with his two albums Dakhma and Diagnosis. Flowers For Bodysnatchers joins the haunted sci-fi party, though I didn’t get as heavy into Duncan Ritchie’s history while writing up his Aokigahara album (the forest history ate most of my word count). And finally there’s Randal Collier-Ford, who’s making his debut with this blog! Well, technically he did on the Cryo Chamber Collaboration of Azathoth, but who could tell where his portions of that jumbo project began and ended. Ah, maybe if I’d taken in some of his prior work, I’d figure out what his particular dark ambient attributes are. For now, all I’ve got to go with is the opening piece on Locus Arcadia.

Into The Maw Where All Men Die certainly is an auspicious title to kick off a dark sci-fi outing, and the music within is suitably apt. Menacing drone, mechanical breathing, claustrophobic mood, with a touch of wonderment at the end as you take in the grandeur of whatever deserted, orbiting super-structure you’re wandering about. Flowers For Bodysnatchers opts more for a pure ‘haunted house’ vibe with his piece, Black Echo Of Morgues And Memory: lots of distant clanking across empty halls, creepy sounds clawing at metal chambers nearby, all leading to an unleashed cacophonic fury of whatever horror lurks erupting on your senses. Mr. Ritichie’s use of natural instruments definitely plays a crucial role in his piece. Council Of Nine, meanwhile, brings things down to a steady ambient drone, Pale Sister Of Sanctuary Lost an almost calm and soothing respite from FfB’s intense outing. He still maintains the desolate space drone that permeates Locus Arcadia though, for God Body Disconnect must take us out in an incredibly cinematic piece. Using a Death Star-tonne of sci-fi sound effects, Prisoner’s Sacrifice Facing Arcadia could be a mini-movie in its own right, complete with soaring score and gentle piano denouement at the end. How Spielbergian of Maollem.

Dopplereffekt - Linear Accelerator

International Deejays Gigolo: 2003

Dopplereffekt is Gerald Donald (and a rotating partner), a darn important person in the world of techno. Mostly for his contributions to Drexciya and Underground Resistance, though this project is held near the same reverent breath from Detroit electro disciples. Heck, some could even point to this act as a precursor to electroclash, the minimalist, sleazy Pornoactress from the 1996 single Infophysix oozing all sorts of detached, deadpan cool. DJ Hell must have thought so, signing Mr. Donald to his International Deejay Gigolo print. Instead of more Dopplereffekt material though, there was Virtual Geisha as Japanese Telecom, a kitschy electro album at the height of electroclash’s kitschy dominance. Then there’s Der Zyklus’ II, which contained some classics of the electro revival in its own right (d’at Discogs Market price, tho’!).

For all intents though, it seemed Mr. Donald was done with Dopplereffekt after making his debut on Hell’s label with the 1999 retrospective Gesamtkunstwerk. But maybe there was enough demand from the Gigolo faithful to hear more under that particular guise, hence the eventual LP we have here. That, or ol’ Gerald was contractually obligated to provide a proper album of new material as Dopplereffekt before moving on. I mean, it’s mighty suspicious this is his last release with Gigolo. It would go a long way into explaining why Linear Accelerator is a rather challenging record.

For sure earlier Dopplereffekt had a hard sci-fi element to it, a fascination with lab experiments and high-end technology. Linear Accelerator takes that to the extreme though, with track titles like Myon-Neutrino, Higgs-Mechanism, and Niobium Resonators. And the music? It’s a long wait for anything resembling a tune on this album. The opening track Photo Injector is over twenty-one minutes of clanking machinery, miniscule bloops, and all sorts of musique concrete abstraction. Niobium Resonators follows, nearly fifteen minutes of clicks, pops, and blast-processing noise. Third cut Graviton runs an additional fourteen minutes, has a muffled, garbled synth running through it, while clicks, pops, and static do the experimental glitch thing that was increasingly in vogue around this time with artsty techno sorts. In case you haven’t kept tally, that’s a whopping forty-nine minutes of this album spent experimenting with electronic sounds. Linear Accelerator has a runtime of seventy minutes, mind you.

The final three tracks do offer some melodic yin to the difficult yang of the first three. Myon-Neutrino has a groovy acid bassline with a haunting sci-fi hook, Z-Boson goes more spritely in its choice of synths, while Higgs-Mechanism offers the closest thing to an electro cut out of anything on here, though significantly muted compared to Donald’s other works.

Obviously Linear Accelerator isn’t an album for the faint of heart - only those who thrill at the intense potential of electronic experimentation need apply. I’m just confounded at how such an abstract release found its way onto Gigolo. Either DJ Hell was aiming for a trendy Mille Plateaux rub, or Donald was having a pisstake with the whole electro revivalist thing.

Aveparthe - Landscapes Over The Sea

Cryo Chamber: 2014

Time for my favorite type of dark ambient, that which gets geographical up in the house. Looks like this one’s got it all: cool coast lines, groovy ground carved by glacial processes, fluvial flows, probably all hanging out in some northern fjord too. Man, fjords are just awesome, all wavy and curvy and shit. They add so much coastal perimeter to your nation, several hundred or even thousands of kilometres of traversable landmass, all with impossibly steep hillsides plunging strait down into the deep black of cold oceans. Sure, the Oregon Coast may have some nifty dunes and eroded lumps of large rocks dotting its path, but there’s so little of it in total. Vancouver Island’s many fjords easily give the region a complete advantage in eroded lumps of large rocks. Look, it’s important for the lucrative postcard and wallpaper trades!

Okay, enough of the silly. While it’s true the concept of ‘untamed wasteland drone’ does appeal to me, it’s more for that sense of urban displacement than any sort of geographical porn. As with dark ambient focusing on deep space, there’s something captivating about unshackling your psyche from any and all human influence, losing oneself in the desolate emptiness of your surroundings. All from the comfort of my home, that is. Sure, I could make the actual trek to the Yukon tundra or alpine snows of the Coastal Mountains if I wanted a true isolation experience, but I like having a choice of six sushi restaurants within walking distance too.

The group Aveparthe hails from a fairly remote region of the world though, so they have some inkling of what it’s like having few ties to civilization at large. While info on Sádon is scarce, not so is the case with the other portion of this project, the charmingly named Astral & Shit (Ivan Gozikov). Hailing from the Russian city of Nevyansk, an administrative town on the eastern side of the Ural range, Mr. Gozikov has idled his time away making copious amounts of experimental noise and drone pieces under the A&S guise, some eighty-plus releases in the past half-decade alone. Throw in an additional eighty-plus releases as Demiurge Urizen, and you’ve got one ridiculously prolific producer. How nice of him to make time to collaborate with ol’ Sádon for a new project like Aveparthe.

Landscapes Over The Sea is their debut, on Cryo Chamber and in general. It consists of five tracks, two lengthy pieces breaching the seventeen minute mark (Nimbostratus, Full Of Sun), two shorter compositions running about three-and-a-half (Fog Machine, 1600), and a final eight minute track titled Turn. These are all straight-forward as far as ambient drone goes, growing and escalating with layers of pads, synths, field recordings, reverb, and timbre. There’s an ethereal quality to them all, especially Full Of Sun which utilizes chants as well. 1600 has a sparse tone going for it, Fog Machine obscures distant sounds, while Turn comparitively sounds luminous. Quite an abrupt ending though. Floating Points would approve.

ACE TRACKS: October 2016

I know I’ve said it a few times now, but I’m still gobsmacked in how much of a backlog I accrued over the summer. Granted, a fair chunk of it was purchased during the previous backlog trawl as well, making my current queue sort of a double-length one. If this one’s taking so long, by God the backlog I’m currently building must be all sorts of ginormous by now. Ah, no, not really. Kinda’ cut back on music buying for a while, in part because finances dictate as such. Besides, I’d like to make some actual progress with my regular alphabetical cue at some point before the year is out. Dammit though, so many cool new releases coming out. No, no… control, I must learn control. Ah, who am I kidding? Better spending spare money on this than booze, I guess. On that cheery note, here’s a nice little Playlist ace tunes covered for this past month of October in our dread year of 2016.


Full track list here.


MISSING ALBUMS:
Various - Hed Kandi: Deeper
Omni Trio - The Haunted Science
enCAPSULAte - Fetal Position
Shaded Explorer - Empatia
Cosmic Replicant - Landscapes Motion

Percentage Of Hip-Hop: 0%
Percentage Of Rock: 5%
Most “WTF?” Track: Floating Points - Peroration Six (seriously, that ending, tho’)

Fairly straight-forward collection of tunes here. Lots of deep vibes, chill vibes, jazzy vibes, groovy vibes, plus some euro dance and metal too. Unfortunately, a couple of the truly intriguing items I reviewed this past month aren’t practical for a Playlist such as this. I mean, how can I select just a few indexed pieces out of 70 Minutes Of Madness when Coldcut’s mastermix opus is best served as a whole. Same goes for a couple of those dark ambient, the sum integral to its whole. And why on Earth isn’t Omni Trio’s Haunted Science on Spotify? I know old Moving Shadow is essentially in streaming limbo these days, but poor form losing that gem to such nonsense.

Cosmic Replicant - Landscapes Motion

Pureuphoria Records: 2015

Cosmic Replicant was a wonderful surprise when I took a chance on his Mission Infinity album, offering up psy-chill tunes with a way-retro ambient-bleep aesthetic unlike anything else I’d heard from Altar Records. I’d have splurged on the entirety of the chap’s discography shortly after if the rest of his material wasn’t restricted to the digital realms. Yes, it’s been over a decade since buying MP3s became big business, but I’m no closer to buying into the practice. If anything, with the advent of streaming services like Spotify, I’ve grown less interested in parting with personal finances for specific downloads. It may be a pittance, but at least something is being paid back to the source with streaming, and that music is available nearly anywhere within the omnipresent nebulous Cloud That Be. I download a paid digital album to my computer, however, and she’s stuck there – heck, I can’t even play them on my main stereo, unlike those sexy CDs proudly displayed within shelves and towers.

However, turns out that Mr. Pavel Shirshin has a couple EPs available at the always awesome free download site Ektoplazm.com. Well shit, son, that’s a price I’ve no problem paying for. What are these, older demos before signing with Altar Records? No, wait, they’re in fact released around the same time, Landscapes Motion in particular coming out just this past year on Pureuphoria Records. Seems Mr. Shirshin made his 2012 debut with the print, a tiny netlabel that doesn’t appear to have much going for it beyond the positive attitude that come with the psy scene. Sometimes that’s all you need, but yeah, I can see why the Cosmic Replicant brand has more releases on Altar. Well, that’s mighty decent of Pavel, coming back to them for a mini-album. Still, I wonder if it was done because this EP doesn’t quite fit the Altar vibe.

Not that I couldn’t see DJ Zen’s print taking a small chance outside its comfort zone, but Landscapes Motion ventures into realms seldom tread by the psy scene: dub techno. For sure there are a few successful crossovers, most prominent in recent times the Son Kite/Minilogue expedition. And Mr. Shirshin’s sound has had elements of dub and techno anyway, though never in such an explicit manner as on this EP. The titular opener suggests we’re in for a groovy, minimalist affair, lacking the psychedelic baggage commonly associated with this scene. Second track Modern Renaissance strips all psy pretense away, hitting you with a steady techno beat filled with pulsing synths and flowing dub treatments. Third cut Flash In The Mist gets back to the downtempo beat action, but is no less clinical in its dub designs, while final tracks Evening Reflections and Layers Of Perception get back to the deep techno rhythms.

Tickle me stunned by Landscapes Motion, this EP nothing like what I was expecting. It likely won’t amaze Deepchord disciples, but Cosmic Replicant certainly holds his own with that scene’s heavyweights. Now, more physical releases, please!

Laurent Garnier - La Home Box

F Communications: 2015

It’s been a long time since Laurent Garnier’s released a new album, and we’re technically still waiting on that too. La Home Box is more a gathering of various singles he produced throughout 2014, with a few additional unreleased items rounding things out to LP length. This has given it a ‘compilation’ label from most, but listen, son, that shit wouldn’t fly back in the day. Hell, when Monsieur Garnier first made his mark in the world of techno music, a dance album was just a bunch of prior singles lumped in with a few unreleased items. That makes La Home Box a retro album! Ain’t nothing old-school about the deluxe box set version though. Four slabs of wax, each a different color, with extra tracks not included with the CD (ten minute long Drifting In Midwaters, ten minute long Confused, additional remixes of a few tunes), all bundled within a pizza box. Hot damn, that’s going to bat for the Black Crack collectors out there. Makes getting the lone piddling CD kinda’ lame, but what need have I for all that vinyl? Besides, I get two versions of The Rise & Fall Of The Donkey Dog, so “haha!” on you, vinyl enthusiasts. Wait, the CD’s also included in that quantum singularity box set? Well, fu

Whether you’re thrilled or disappointed that La Home Box isn’t a new album-proper from Mr. Garnier will likely depend on what you expect out of his music. Say what you want about his adventures into genres unexplored, but you cannot deny he has big French balls indulging his musical kleptomania, turning away those who just want more techno weapons in their arsenal. They like Man With The Red Face, but going full jazz? Not so much.

Such folks should then be pleased with La Home Box, as it’s a no-nonsense affair of various dancefloor tools, artistic indulgences be damned. I mean, what else could it be, given this is a ‘compilation’ of scattered singles, where leftfield genre dalliances just aren’t done (save the occasional B2-side). Instead we stick to the thumping heads-down techno (Psyche-Delia, I’m Going Home, M.I.L.F.), the Afro-beat techno (Boom (Chakalok) (Traumer African Remix)), the “techno with some house elements but not quite tech-house” techno (Enchanté, Bang (The Underground Doesn’t Stop)), and the “this is not techno, it’s deep house, you goof” techno (And The Party Goes On). Interestingly, though hardly surprising, the CD exclusive cuts find Mr. Garnier bucking the techno in favor of something different. The Rise & Fall Of The Donkey Dog has something of an electro-rock build going for it, while the Husbands Remix does the French chill-pop thing you’d expect of AIR and the like. Oh, and Revenge Of The Lol Cat sounds like Garnier having a pisstake with epic G-funk boogie. LOL indeed.

So overall a satisfying collection of tunes from ol’ Laurent – his craftsmanship around an escalating techno groove remains as sharp as ever. Wouldn’t mind a real album for his next outing though.

Various - Journeys By DJ: Coldcut - 70 Minutes Of Madness

Music Unites/Journeys By DJ™ LLC: 1995/2002

It’s rare that a DJ mix series is hijacked by a contributor to such a degree, they become solely associated with it. For sure you have game changers, as James Holden and Joris Voorn did with the Balance series. Or some jocks become synonymous with a series due to endless entries into its canon (the forever Nick Warren & Deep Dish show that Global Underground became). Journeys By DJ already had six volumes under its belt by the time Coldcut came along with their seventy minutes of madness, including entries from John Digweed, Paul Oakenfold, DJ Rap, and Danny Rampling. Heck, even Judge Jules beat More and Black to the “30+ Tracks Set” when he put out his mix for the series. Yet these days everyone always assumes Journeys By DJ was a Coldcut one-off, future entries by Gilles Peterson and Jay Chappell even less remarked upon. So impactful was this mix, that it alone received the re-issue treatment in 2002. Oh come on, Billy Nasty’s set wasn’t bad, was it?

Still, you can’t knock the result, 70 Minutes Of Madness easily earning its Classic Status as a DJ mix CD for the ages. They didn’t just rinse out a pile of similar tunes, but studio-mashed tons of disparate sounds, styles, and genres into a megamix of their super-deep crates. Junior Reed hangin’ with Newcleus! Harold Budd pallin’ about with Photek! Plastikman getting funky with Jedi Knights! Air Liquide trippin’ balls with Bob Holroyd! The Dr. Who theme just being all awesome-sauce no matter who’s around it (Red Snapper, The Sabres Of Paradise, and Jimmy Cauty, if you must know). Not to mention a shit-ton of breaks, beats, pieces, scratching, cross-cutting, and acapella action littered throughout. Coldcut were already regarded as masters of the one-n-two, but typically translated their skill into producing DJ tools and sample-heavy songs. This was the first time they got into the studio for a commercial mix CD showcasing their DJ trade – well, second, if you count Tone Tales From Tomorrow a year prior – knocking it out of the park so hard, they practically abandoned this particular market forever after. A shame, as I’d love to hear what another 70 Minutes Of Madness might entail with over two decades worth of gathered new weapons within their coffers.

Possibly the most outrageous thing about this set is how it bucks conventional set construction. The opening salvo including The Truper (Photek), Wagon Christ, and Funki Porcini (with Dillinja on the rub) features some of the most frenetic ragga jungle you’d ever hear in 1995, all within the first ten minutes! You’d think the set could only go down in energy from there, but tons of acid, funk, and breakin’ action maintain an even keel for the most part. Even with sporadic downtime throughout this set, Coldcut never lose the plot, coming back with a new avenue of music to explore. Throw in a final forty seconds of the needle riding out the last record grooves? Yeah, vinyl bliss.

Sash! - It's My Life (Special Edition)

Scandinavian Records: 1997

I got this for a dime. That alone is worth the price of admission for Ecuador, one of my all-time guilty pleasure anthems. And surely there’s something else across two CDs of Sash! music that will make my commitment of 0.10 Canadian dollars practical. Surely a better investment than getting the single, which features all the same remixes found in this special edition of It’s My Life. Two extra tracks of decent euro dance fluff, and I’ll have gotten plenty return on my 1.40 peso expense.

Eh, who exactly is Sash!, you ask? Oh come on, you know who these guys are. Even if you somehow missed the late ‘90s club boom, you’ve heard their tracks, or similar knockoffs of their sound. Really, Sash! was something of a knockoff themselves, aping the pluck-heavy riffs Rollo perfected with Faithless for their own use, as did many producers at the time. It was Sash!, however, that had the most commercial success with them, in large part thanks to aggressive marketing and licensing of their big hits off here (Ecuador, Encore Une Fois, Stay, and all those Future Breeze remixes), such to the point they’re the default association with plucking synth club anthems. And while the group has carried on in the commercial world to this day, nothing has replicated the undeniable impact Sash! generated prior to the turn of the millennium. Soccer highlight reels would never be the same.

But it all started somewhere, and that somewhere is their debut album It’s My Life, of which I spent six pence upon (and dropping!). A few versions with different track arrangements are floating about, but mine doesn’t waste your time, dropping the three main anthems in your lap right out the gate. The titular opener features the sounds you’d expect of Sash! (synth plucks, mild acid, standard euro club beat, looping vocal), but subdued compared to their heavy hitters. Encore Une Fois did much better, especially the trancy Future Breeze rub, but I’ve long been ambivalent to this hit – 2 Lips’ Je T’Aime did the same thing better anyway. Following that is Ecuador, and good luck getting that killer piano earworm and Sabine Ohmes’ glorious shouting out of your head for the rest of the day! (“Eh-QUAY-DORa!”)

As for the rest, you get a few club track retreads (MightyBreak, Cheating Twister, Sweat), a euro pop cut that I don’t remember but had a ton of remixes (Stay), and The Final Pizzi, another big epic pluck-anthem I thought was made by someone else. Hell, maybe it is, but I’m too stupid to recall who (they all kinda’ sound the same anyway). There’s also Hoopstar, a collaboration with d’n’b act Nonex, and sounding completely daft on an album like this as a result. Haha, now that’s worth the 0.51 Chinese yen spent.

Not that bonus remix CD though. A couple agreeable trance and house rubs of Stay aside, this one’s complete rubbish. It’s got Armand Van Helden doing speed garage, for God’s sake! Ugh…

Perturbator - I Am The Night

Blood Music: 2012/2015

The second album from Perturbator, and the dawning realization he could take his hot synthwave action out of the slummy homage backstreets, and into the brazen neon-glow of concept LPs. It wasn’t long either, I Am The Night coming out the same year as his debut full-length Terror 404. Throw in an additional three EPs, and you’re looking at one highly fruitful 2012 for Mr. Kent, further remarkable considering a lot of this was self-released. Strong buzz generated more than enough demand for something physical though, and Blood Music keeps coming through in latex-covered spades (um, ew?). This album saw two vinyl represses in 2015, plus another one this year, not to mention the various limited edition cassette versions. Oh, and a digipak CD as well. Yay! Kinda’ makes this either woefully neglected, or ridiculously scarce. Hey, remember when tapes held that status? Fun times.

While the idea of Perturbator as a night driving avenger first appeared in the Night Driving Avenger single, it fully crystallizes here with I Am The Night. There’s a world inside Mr. Kent’s mind, one he must release from his imagination and sent free-wheeling into your earholes and brain matter. Where the future is near, the streets are crime, and the rulers are wicked. Fortunately for the uninitiated, this album does offer a few pieces of dialog helping set the stage for Perturbator’s retro future-shock vision, including an opening piece called The New Black that sounds like it was cribbed from Robocop. It’s in fact Network, a 1976 movie that rather accurately predicted the cable news of this dire year of 2016. Say, just how far into the future did Perturbator intend these synthwave chronicles to be?

I Am The Night isn’t quite as focused on a specific narrative as future Perturbator records are, but it more than makes up for it in variety of tuneage. This is easily the most melodic of all his albums I’ve thus far reviewed, with shimmering synths aplenty throughout. Eclipse has a scorcher of a soaring riff, the titular cut sounds like it aped the ‘twinkle prog’ synths for a track wonderfully contrasted with a thumping low end, and Deviance with Arcade High is all kinds of retro chipper. Then there’s the pure synth-pop songs - ballads like Naked Tongues and Desire featuring vocalists, or beatless instrumental pieces like interlude Nexus Six and closer The Price Of Failure benefiting an actual movie for these to score. Throw in your mint pulse-pounding Perturbator cuts like Retrogenesis, Technoir, and Raining Steel, and you’ve got solid album covering all your synthwave needs.

If that’s still not enough, a few bonus tracks at the end round things out, including a collaboration with Dynatron in Volcanic Machinery - it’s surprisingly not as moody as you’d expect of these two working together. Meanwhile, Lilith’s rhythm almost sounds like futurepop (ooh, think of that pairing!), while slow-jam Girl In A Black Dress features a digital saxophone. Surprisingly comes off better than most saxophone recordings from the ‘80s.

Cities Last Broadcast - The Humming Tapes

Cryo Chamber: 2016

And finally I get to that oldest of dark ambient schools, the post-industrial class. Actually, calling it ‘post’ isn’t entirely accurate, this stuff developing almost concurrently with the warped sound experiments of early industrial. Once dark ambient started finding different ways of exploring the macabre side of drone though, its shared approach to the craft with traditional ambient dragged it out of the industrial scene into its own thing. Now you’ve got so many different styles of dark ambient, you’d almost need a Music Guide detailing it all; or not, this particular scene not as anal retentive about sub-genre purity as so many other electronic music scenes. For sure one could, if anything to help unsuspecting explorers differentiate from ‘space soul-crush’ from ‘urban decay doomcore’ from ‘Hell Dimension sadstep’ from ‘rainbow-sparkle drone’ (it’s an ironic micro-genre). But it’s not necessary, dark ambient connoisseurs content within their own interests, though perhaps with a shared smirk towards those who fear treading within.

Cities Last Broadcast, or Pär Boström to the Swedish Illuminati Division, has floated about the dark ambient scene for a while now. He’s probably better off known as Kammarheit, a project trending towards the reflective, melancholy side of dark ambient, and didn’t offer much exploration of unique recording methods. As an alias like Cities Last Broadcast though, you’re practically mandated to indulge industrial’s aesthetic of metropolitan decay. Crackling tape recordings, rusted grind of neglected machinery, billowing wind through burnt husks of buildings, warped records of a fallen culture - all that good stuff. For sure I’ve dealt with the post-apocalypse setting before, but most of those feature times significantly past the fall of Man, and often still using contemporary studio gear for recording. The Humming Tapes places us about as close to the initial action I’ve come across yet, feeling more like a Final Days Of A Victorian War than dealing with the after affects.

Well, the setting makes sense, given the crackling, droning analog tone that permeates this album. The actual content, however, focuses on the practice of séance, where a group of people sit together to communicate with spirits, a rather popular activity during the Victorian Era. Even Houdini getting in on that action, and grainy photographs of the sessions helped perpetuate the myth, but most séance mediums were considered frauds or hoaxes. Whether real or fake, The Humming Tapes presents itself as a recording from one such intense session, and I can’t help but wonder if ol’ Pär partook in a séance just for some authentic field recordings. Well no wonder that Glossolalia track sets my neck hairs on end!

Whether you believe in commune with the afterlife or not, The Humming Tapes definitely sells you on the atmosphere of a séance. It’s got the anxious waiting in the dark (The Sitting), the creepy contact (Glossolalia), a strangely forlorn discourse with the dead (Centennial), and that soul-emptying sense that you got more than you bargained for in toying with spirits (Electricity, Kathédra). A charming Halloween album, then.