Klaus Schulze & Pete Namlook featuring Bill Laswell - The Evolution Of The Dark Side Of The Moog

Ambient World/MIG: 2002/2016

I wasn’t considering detailing the bonus discs of these Dark Side Of The Moog box sets. True, I’ve a commitment to reviewing Every.Single. CD. of my music collection, but I’ve fudged things here and there. Most double-disc entries receive a lone write-up from yours truly, and even 3CD sets are sometimes reduced to a singular offering of my self-imposed word count (sorry, Trade: Past-Present-Future; not-sorry, This Is… Techno). What harm is there in quickly glossing over redundant features, of which I’m almost certain these bonus discs are. What does Vol. 1 of this bundle include anyhow?

The Evolution Of The Dark Side Of The Moog, eh. Huh, it’s got completely different cover art from all the stock ones used for the other CDs. It also apparently contains tracks from each of the first eight editions of the series (or ‘excerpts’ in the case of Wish You Were There and A Saucerful Of Ambience, since those two weren’t indexed as typical albums). I guess this would serve as a handy hour-long summation of Namlook’s work with Schulze, picking out the highlights, or at least the best musical representation of the project. Why stop at Dark Side Of The Moog VIII though, when the series made it all the way to XI? There’s more than meets the eye with this CD, and I must find out. I must!

*clickity-clickty clack; searching Lord Discogs ain’t wack*

Well I’ll be darned. The Evolution Of The Dark Side Of The Moog was indeed a separate release, put out on Fax +49-69/450464 reissue sublabel Ambient World. And as it came out in 2002, there was only eight volumes of Dark Side Of The Moog available anyway. This… also means that I now must review this CD as its own entity, but out of alphabetical order since it’s contained within this first box set. My OCD is sending conflicting demands.

Charmingly, it opens with a bit of dialog from Robert Moog himself, offering an introduction to The Dark Side Of The Moog, plus his email address or some reason. This was used in the fifth album of the series, and has now thusly ruined the surprise for the next review. Thanks, MIG!

Only a three minute synthy piece from Wish You Were There makes the cut for this Dark Side Of The Moog mega-showcase, but A Saucerful Of Secrets gets a whopping fifteen minutes plucked from its lengthy runtime. Fortunately, it’s the best fifteen minutes of that session, starting with energetic techno before heading into another synth solo from Schulze. Part III and Part IV of Phantom Heart Brother shows up, and if you can’t remember which those were, um… it’s the electro piece, and the synth heavy techno piece. Three Pipers At The Gates Of Dawn features Part VII and VIII, a short drone portion followed by another techno work with Laswell Bass (Ace Track, remember?). And as for the remaining tracks, I’ll tackle them when I come to them properly. Y’know, spoilers and all.

Klaus Schulze & Pete Namlook featuring Bill Laswell - The Dark Side Of The Moog IV

Fax +49-69/450464/MIG: 1996/2016

Mr. Kuhlmann worked with dozens of musicians in his time, but only a few did he continuously pair up with. Naturally Klaus Schulze is one such individual, otherwise we wouldn’t be diving into a twelve volume series called The Dark Side Of The Moog right now. Move D. (David Moufang) was another one, though the bulk of their collaborations took place in the new millennium. Then there’s Bill Laswell, who’s worked with so many musicians (just, so many…), a couple sessions with The Namlookian One was a no-brainer. I’ve already talked about their Psychonavigation work, and between that and their Outland side-project, they racked up eleven albums total, most produced before the year 2000. Seems natural then, that Mr. Laswell would get himself in on those Dark Side Of The Moog sessions while hanging out at Namlook’s studio. Why absolutely these modern Berlin-School works could use some heavy dub bass action. It’s, like, old-school meets new-school, with a dash of middle-school thrown in! Yeah, I know, Laswell’s more known for his ‘90s work than ‘80s material (including the project Material), but that darn tagline got stuck in my head, and damned if I don’t get it out!

Having ol’ Bill onboard makes for a radically different album in the Dark Side Of The Moog canon, with less adherence to Schulze’s approach to music craft. In fact, this album is remarkably uptempo considering the players involved – even Namlook’s take on trance was slowly on the wane by ’96. For sure Three Pipers At The Gates of Dawn (Part I) has the hallmarks of a typical Dark Side Of The Moog outing, with minimalist sounds and effects floating about. Yet there’s also a sense of urgency too, building synth strings and intermittent sci-fi noises escalating the piece’s tension.

By the time the brisk pace of Part II drops, it all feels worth the wait, a right hum-dinger of a… trance track? No, it’s not really that. For starters, it’s nearly twenty-two minutes long, and most trance just don’t do that (unless you’re Oliver Lieb). Secondly, while it has the mini-arp bassline and high-bpm, the actual kick is quite soft, leading to a rather tame rhythm section in service of the synth and dub action going on throughout. And it seems each contributor to this piece has their own moment to shine, whether it’s Namlook doing his sci-fi effects thing, Schulze doing his synth solo thing (a charming, whistling number), or Laswell adding extra *oomph* to the bottom end without ever overshadowing the others.

Part II really is the main talking point on here, but here’s a few additional notes. Most of the remaining tracks (nine in total) are brief, droney, experimental pieces, few breaching three minutes in length. Part V does a little techno for its short running time, and hey, Laswell’s bass! Part VIII explores the idea more, over eight minutes worth. It’s cool, but nothing we haven’t heard from the players involved before. Man, that Part II tho’… hoo!

Klaus Schulze & Pete Namlook - The Dark Side Of The Moog III

Fax +49-69/450464/MIG: 1995/2016

Wait a minute! How are we even getting these Dark Side Of The Moog reissues in the first place? The status of Pete Namlook’s label remains in limbo, so many ancient artifacts from the Fax +49-69/450464 archives long out of print. Even Ambient World, a sublabel specifically set-up for reissues of popular Fax+ releases, couldn’t keep their stock in for long, and they reissued Mr. Kuhlmann’s collaborations with Klaus Schulze twice! You might even still find some floating around, though not at any decent price. And as both prints closed shop after Namlook’s untimely death, everything from the Fax+ archives seems sealed away until the estate sorts things out with their respective owners. It’s not like all those original contributors to Fax+ can come knocking for their music back, can they?

Apparently so, though it’s not surprising that someone who’s been in the business as long as Schulze would have equal share in the Dark Side Of The Moog albums. And it just so happens ol’ Klaus has a reissue deal with MIG (Made In Germany Music), a relatively new print that deals almost exclusively with reissues. After perusing their wares, it seems the name’s a misnomer, with plenty American, UK, and other European groups getting attention from MIG, though I’m hard pressed to recognize much of them. Ian Hunter, Weather Report, Stray Cats… but yeah, there’s definitely a skewing towards German krautrock here, what with bands like Novalis, Epitaph, and of course Mr. Schulze himself making up the bulk. And if MIG is in the process of making all of Klaus’ music available again in the modern era, it’s only proper that the Dark Side Of The Moog sessions should receive the same treatment.

The Dark Side Of The Moog III marked a change in how Namlook and Schulze approached the project: each segment is are now indexed normally! Yep, no more five-minute Parts, where differing pieces bleed into each other and the like. Naturally that defeats the notion of playing these as a single composition of music, but even here the duo are showing signs of growing bored of that angle. Whereas Wish You Were There and A Saucerful Of Ambience generally flowed from beginning to end, each Part of Phantom Heart Brother is clearly different from what came before. Part 1 lasts over eighteen minutes, mostly consisting of corny ‘spo-O-o-O-ky’ modulating synth sounds, and entirely skippable. Part 2 keeps those sounds going for a lengthy fade-out, but vintage Berlin-School synths coupled with spacey guitar drastically changes the album’s tone. Following that, Part 3 abandons ‘70s sounds altogether, going for minimalist abstract electro as a ten-minute lead into the requisite trance cut in Part 4, and not a half-bad offering at that. Finally, Part 5 goes pure ambient, though in that distinct spacey Fax+ style Namlook made his own, before a little kraut guitar action is added to the mix. This is undoubtedly what everyone figured a Schulze-Namlook pairing would produce. We’re finding a groove now, friends.

Klaus Schulze & Pete Namlook - The Dark Side Of The Moog II

Fax +49-69/450464/MIG: 1995/2016

Make no mistake: Klaus Schulze and Pete Namlook roamed drastically different orbits in the early ‘90s, in no small part from being of two different generations of synth music. One was studious, old-school, and strictly for the art houses, consumed by egg-heads of electronic music. The other had his finger on the pulse of clubland, offering up energetic dance beats alongside his calmer, spacier moments enjoyed by knackered punters. Most attempts at melding the disparate scenes were met with indifference at best, failure at worst. And while I’ve no doubt Namlook took some inspiration from Schulze’s work, plenty other Berlin-School pioneers were still active should he have gained the courage to contact any of them. But why would any of them bother with some ‘rave’ guy in the first place?

Turns out ol’ Klaus did, detecting kinship with Mr. Kuhlmann after hearing his work on the second Air album. How the aged German came into contact with the younger German’s work was almost incidental, a brief meeting from a mutual associate, and somehow from that Schulze took in enough of a sampling of Namlook’s work to request an exchange of ideas, if not a full-on collaboration. Remarkable, considering Klaus was notorious for keeping his synth work a pure expression of his own muse with little outside input. It led to many stunning works, true, but also a fair bit of unfiltered waffle too. Hey, sounds like the bulk of Namlook’s discography as well! Clearly, a match made in stars of heaven.

The Dark Side Of The Moog II picks up where the first left off, expanding on the single-track concept with Schulze’s sounds leading for much of the proceedings. As before, the album is indexed with five minute parts, expanded by two additional tracks as we have ten extra minutes in this piece (A Saucerful Of Ambience). Again, these aren’t demarcations for any particular transition within this sixty-minute long composition, which is just as well because this is one tedious, meandering sixty-minute long composition.

The first twenty minutes is all sound-effects and field recordings, dominated by twitchy mechanical crickets, and intermittently pierced by distant gongs. It paints an outwordly vista, some landscape at the edge of an alien forest, but man does it ever go on and on. Around Part V, sci-fi pings, bleeps, and paarps provide an interlude of sorts, and then it’s back to sound effects for a bit longer (yay running waters). Finally, some half-hour in, we get actual melody, a rather typical offering of Berlin-School synth noodling, but such a welcome respite after so much abstract dithering. Namlook’s ear for trance takes a turn around Part IX, but it doesn’t last long, and we’re back to grand synth solos and field recordings for the final sixteen minutes.

Apparently both Schulze and Namlook didn’t want these efforts to sound too ‘70s, but A Saucerful Of Ambience is about as old-school as these Dark Side Of The Moogs go. They’re still getting a handle on this, methinks.

Klaus Schulze & Pete Namlook - The Dark Side Of The Moog

Fax +49-69/450464/MIG: 1994/2016

Gathering up the many, many, many volumes of Pete Namlook and Klaus Schulze’s epic collaboration series The Dark Side Of The Moog was never much of a priority. For sure if I saw one on the cheap, I’d snatch that sucker up, but odds of that happening with any release from Fax +49-69/450464 or its reissue sub-label Ambient World are absurdly low. On the other hand, a spiffy box set that does all that grueling work for me? Well shit, son, sign me up for that! And it’s what MIG done did, releasing all eleven volumes of The Dark Side Of The Moog in three bundles, plus a few bonuses for good measure. Though I remained blasé about the concept of Old Berlin-School teaming up with New Berlin-School, I’d be a fool to not spring for at least a couple of these boxes. Naturally, that now means I must review Every. Single. CD. Time for a serious knowledge drop in the project, then, but self-imposed word count runs short, so let’s get into The Dark Side Of The Moog, volume one. Eh? Of course the first wasn’t given a proper numerical demarcation. Like ol’ Pete and Klaus had any idea this would become such a long lasting thing.

If anything, Mr. Kuhlmann seems a little star-struck in his contributions for their initial session. He freely admitted as such, encouraging Mr. Schulze to do what he do best – coerce musical exotica out of crusty analog gear – and he’d work around that. This wasn’t so much about bringing one of the O.G.s of synth music into the hip ‘90s, but exploring what ‘70s music could do given two decades of technological advancements. This does lend to a rather freeform approach to songcraft, but that’s always been the Berlin School methodology regardless. If anything, it had lost its way as many synth wizards looked at making bank during the ‘80s once their sounds caught on with mainstream crowds. Those that didn’t adapt their craft to pop production or movie scores were left in relative obscurity, only later rediscovered by meticulous archivists of synthesizer chronology. Dear God, is this ever turning into a fancy-schmancy history lesson. Back to music.

The Dark Side Of The Moog (Da’ Kickoff) contains ten tracks, each titled Wish You Were There - yeah, the Pink Floyd puns can’t stop, won’t stop. And calling these individual pieces tracks is a misnomer, everything equally split five minutes apiece, save a whopping six minute finale. There are definite segments throughout, as Klaus moves through spacey kraut, sci-fi effects, and grand displays of modern classical synths, but none of the indexes mark any particular transition. About the mid-point, an electro beat emerges, leaves for some more experimental wibbling, and finally we’re treated to a little classic trance business. Not much, mind, but Namlook’s presence is definitely felt in this final stretch, whereas most of the preceding portions he sat back letting Schulze strut his stuff. They’d get better at blending their sounds.

Jlin - Dark Energy

Planet Mu: 2015

Dark Energy is the album every music journalist was anxiously waiting for, where they could finally show the world just how much they knew about the way-underground Chicago scene known as juke and footwork. For sure they had ample releases to draw from, but most of those were singles, compilations or mixes, items that just can’t fit in year-end Best Of articles, where the LP continues to dominate. No, they needed a proper album on the market to showcase all their knowledge of that particular scene, and Jlin’s debut was as good as any item for the task. I’ve barely come across a single review of Dark Energy that doesn’t start with a tedious, one-thousand word essay going on about footwork’s rise from Windy City obscurity to festival mainstage triumph, filled with tons of fancy, sophomore grammar and word salads describing the music. Dudes, it’s just fuckin’ dance music, with a sound palette no more intricate than ghetto-tech (sans the ass-n-titties) – stop over-analyzing this, especially something as primal and basic as juke.

Right, this style of music does have its complexity, in that its pure function is challenging groups of dancers in displaying their fancy footwork. And it seems music journos latched onto Dark Energy so syrupy because Jlin took the genre a bit further than that. A track like opener Black Ballet shows melodic touches with piano pieces, orchestral stabs, and chopped choir vocal complementing the rattling hi-hats, crisp snares, and thick bass – y’know, sophisticated stuff. Elsewhere, Unknown Tongues comes off like a screwy bhangra cut, Guantanamo has something of a message within its vocal samples (if you squint hard enough), while Ra almost contains a hook with its chippy manipulation of that particular word.

In fact, there’s a lot of chippy production on this album, which in of itself is part of footwork’s appeal as a dancefloor tool; challenging jukes and breakers with spastic bursts of snares, claps, and bass energy, making use of unconventional time-signatures, and such. Infrared, with its sharp synths and Mortal Kombat samples, has b-boy showdowns square in its sights. Black Diamond hits with that conga fury, and Abnormal Restriction literally takes the ‘screw’ idea of ‘chop-n-screw’ with abrasive mechanical whirring.

That all said, Jlin’s debut does get tiresome after a while. Eleven tracks that generally consists of *chik-chiki-chk clap, boom-boom-boom CLAP*, with little variation in drum kit sounds, begins showing the limitations of this genre. And while Dark Energy does show more dynamism than other rhythm-heavy ghetto tracks of scenes past, this is hardly the ‘music of the F-U-T-U-R-E’ many highfalutin critics purport it as. Yeah, Kanye will undoubtedly soon sample it, though more to prove he still knows the pulse of Chicago streets, yo’ – dude would sample gabber if he felt it’d improve his production rep. Still, if you’ve been on the fence about footwork, Dark Energy’s a decent entry point into the scene– like, anything Planet Mu has no problem promoting can’t be all bad, can it?

The Groove Corporation - Co-Operation

6 X 6 Records: 1994/1995

Another one of the great “what ifs?” of emergent UK house music, Electribe 101 was primed for crossover triumph. Talented musicians in the studio, a bourgeoning starlet in Billy Ray Martin on vocals, and Tom Watkins as their management (he of Pet Shop Boys’ success) – what could go wrong? After a strong debut album in Electribal Memories, things fell apart, including a Depeche Mode support tour that had fans booing them off stage. So it goes in this business though, and the players went their separate ways, Billy Ray Martin finding fame as a solo artist, and the remnants of Electribe 101 rebranding themselves as the reggae roots loving group Groove Corporation. And because the future G.Corp had a fondness of the dubbier side of that music, they fell in with the trendy ambient dub scene of the early ‘90s – having their studio in that movement’s home of Birmingham didn’t hurt either.

A couple early efforts on Beyond’s seminal Ambient Dub series gave Groove Corporation some underground buzz. They soon signed to the newly formed 6 x 6 Records (they of Sasha & Digweed’s Renaissance fame), their Passion E.P. giving them even greater buzz with the progressive house contingent. Things looked mighty good for the boys of G.Corp when Co-Operation finally dropped in 1994. It’s got the reggae soul, dubby-hop, and just enough crossover appeal for a record out in 1991. Ah, whoops, sorry, guys, but have you heard what Leftfield and Massive Attack were up to around this time? Kinda’ puts your sound a bit out of touch, no matter how classy it all comes off.

Things never get to ‘cod reggae’ levels on this album, but tracks like Showtime, How Did It Come To This, Rain, Twist & Change, and You feel strictly aimed for a little chart action. Can’t believe the UK was too fussed for these sounds anymore, especially from a group initially gaining its critical plaudits well away from the mainstream. Some of their proggy house tunes do make the cut (Roots Controller, Hypnotherapy, Passion), while others get right proper with the reggae dub action (Pray, This Is How I Stay, Ghetto Prayer), so Co-Operation does have a nice blend of both for favored parties of either or.

Still, maybe Groove Corporation suspected they were leaving their ambient dub followers in the dust with an album with such pop leanings, hence a limited edition version including a second CD of such music. This is where G.Corp’s in their element, tunes originating or remixed into dub instrumentals before repurposed with vocals on the Album Prime. Folks liked this bonus disc so much that Groove Corporation re-released it as an independent album with a couple additional tracks a few years after the fact, called Co-Operation Dub. Seems most of the group’s early compilation duty comes from this CD (A Voyage On The Marie-Celeste, Return Of The Skunk Unlimited Orchestra, Ghettoprayer (Deep Blue Dub)). Hm, maybe that’s why I have a bias towards it.

Aphex Twin - Cheetah EP

Warp Records: 2016

I’m flabbergasted. Stooptafried. Diskumbunkulatorated. Have had my world twisted inside the outside. Made very wery flummoxed in the bummox. Caught just a bit of guard. Cheetah has thrown me for a loop in how unconventional an Aphex Twin record can be. Where are the drill-n-bass beats? Micro-glitch edits? Synths and pads painting outwardly imagery within the furthest reaches of your lucid dreams? Not even something hidden, like that infamous visage of your grinning mug only visible within a spectrogram? There’s some fun acid in Cirklon, but nothing that’ll challenge the norms of what’s expected from a TB-303 workout. And I wouldn’t count the short sonic doodles of Cheeta1b ms800 and Cheeta2 ms800 as anything worth getting fussed about, unless that’s where Mr. Dee James is hiding one of his trademark pranks.

Or maybe there isn’t any sort of catch to this EP. Perhaps, after years of challenging what we expect from electronic music, Aphex Twin has finally decided it’s time to release some ‘normal’ dance tunes, with easy rhythms and pleasant tones. No more IDM, no more ambient; no more experiments, just plain and simple techno. Sorry, I wanted that to rhyme, but ‘trance’ is the only thing that works there, and the one thing we can all agree on is Aphex Twin has never, ever been trance. Except for perhaps Polynominal-C, if you squint your ears in the right direction.

Of course Cheetah isn’t normal in a traditional house or techno sense, but it’s definitely the most conventional sounding tunes in Aphex Twin’s repertoire in some time. The Analord series Ritichie Jameson released as ‘AFX’ is a close cousin, and we could even dig super deep into the way-back era of Polygon Window for another comparison. I’m honestly so very tempted in tossing the ‘deep’ tag onto CheetahT2 (Ld Spectrum) and CheetahT7b, in that these are some seriously slow, lazy downbeat vibes. I’ve heard they can be played at either 33 or 45 should you snag yourself the vinyl, but as I have no such medium within my possession, I’ll assume these slow versions are the correct versions as Jichard W. Rames envisioned. Besides, that acid bassline in CheetahT7b is just too damn groovy at 33 to not be intentional!

As mentioned, the Cirklon tracks get deeper into the acid funk. Cirklon1 offers more mint TB-303 bassline business, while Cirklon3 (Колхозная Mix) goes more electro. For all us CD collectors, we get bonus cut 2X202-ST5, another charming piece of drum machine foolery. There’s nothing extra special about it beyond clap fills, simply content in letting the mild acid bobble about a techno break. It’s about as b-side as any track can get, but don’t tell the vinyl enthusiasts that – they’re already miffed about losing out on this for their Aphex Twin Completist Collection. Look, you already got some of the best Analord material on the Black Crack, so you can let us have this. I wouldn’t recommend Cheetah for anyone but such Aphex completists though.

Claptone - Charmer

Different: 2015

DJs and producers hiding behind masked gimmicks are far from a unique thing in dance music. And I’ve gone on record as being a fan of the concept, even when I’m not a fan of the music they make and perform (hi, deadmau5!). It adds a saucy bit of spice to club culture, where the mantra of most scenes is to lose yourself in a sea of like-minded yet equally anonymous individuals. Having some bloke with a cool t-shirt and nice haircut bobbing behind the DJ’s deck as all lights flash upon him sullies that. If you must make your playing of other people’s music the focus of the night, why not add to the atmosphere with your own mask or costume? Such is the manifesto Claptone preaches, always donning a golden-beaked harlequin facade, a rather unsettling sight given such masks’ reputation as adorned by plague doctors.

Fortunately for Claptone, he’s more than just his gimmick, one of the surprising new stars in an overstuffed house scene. Would he have gotten to this point without the mask? Eh, probably, though you cannot deny it gave him a substantial boost. Groovy, soulful gems like No Eyes, Puppet Theatre, and Dear Life were gonna’ get repped by all the very important deep house jocks regardless, but as performed by a DJ committed to his act? Now that’s just mint, m’boy! And despite the rising fame, Claptone’s done an admirable job maintaining his obscurity. Still, I’m certain the Google return for “who is Claptone” is accurate, if only because the beard matches. The Berlin hometown is also a solid clue in this Police Squad level of sleuthing.

Anyhow, Charmer, the debut album from Claptone. The first thing that struck me while listening to it is how much it feels indebted to Hercules & Love Affair. Yeah, ‘member when vintage deep house last had a big resurgence, some eight years past? It didn’t linger (for reasons), but if it had, the music on this record is likely the sound that would have carried on in its stead. Taking garage and soul of days long past and giving it a modern sheen, all the while throwing in an assortment of indie crooners famed and obscure - sounds familiar, don't it. Singers included here are Jay-Jay Johanson, Nathan Nicholson, Young Galaxy, Peter Bjorn, Jaw, and Alec Ounsworth of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (one of the most insufferable indie rock band names ever). And while the deep end of house generally rules Charmer, Claptone finds room for a few bumpin’ acid cuts too (The Music Got me, Party Girl, Your Body), plus a little Latin vibe in Ghost.

Charmer is definitely an album that lives up to its name, always class and never overselling itself. Even the one major complaint one can levy against it – that all the rhythms essentially boil down to a stock thunk-clap-thunk-clap template – are overcome by Claptone’s sense of songcraft. Easily one of the best deep house records of the past year, this.

Uganasie - Call Of The North

Cryo Chamber: 2014

And thus we return to the frigid sounds of Ugasanie, or Угасание in his native Belarus. This CD came out the year before Eye Of Tunguska, and for a brief time held the distinction as one of Cryo Chamber’s first sell-outs. At least, I’m assuming that was the case – I haven’t always kept tabs on the label’s Bandcamp. When I first took a proper perusal of their catalog though, this and Signals IV-V-VI were the only items with the dreaded red “Sold Out” tag attached. And that was a shame for yours truly, anxious to take a deeper plunge into Ugasanie's dark ambient world that included music of spiritual kinship with Biosphere’s work. I mean, just look at that cover art! So cold and inhospitable, yet captivating and mysterious, a realm untouched by the hand of Man, daring the spirit into challenging one’s mettle against the harshest of this planet’s clime’s. Still, I wouldn’t want to trek across the alpine glaciers reaching deep into my British Columbian backyard in the dead of winter – I just like imagining doing so.

In any event, Cryo Chamber restocked their wares, and upon seeing Call Of The North back in, I quickly snatched that one up. Funny enough, another Ugasanie album, White Silence, has since been fully plundered from the label’s stores, but I got that one way back, so it’s all good. During that uncertain in between however, I couldn’t help but wonder what it was about this album that had folks swarming in for a closer listen. Was it really just that hypnotizing cover art, or was there something more, something deeper, a masterclass of dark ambient and drone craftsmanship that stood Call Of The North above all its Cryo Chamber brethren?

Well, it’s got a nifty little concept behind it. Unlike the explicit narrative of Eye Of Tunguska, this album deals with a unique topic, that of a condition known as piblokto, or ‘Arctic Hysteria’. Essentially, there are reported cases of people going mad during the long winter night, overcome by remoteness and, if you believe in shamanism, the power of aurora. As this is strictly an Arctic phenomenon, most reported cases attributed to isolated Inuit communities and early European explorers, it’s not widely researched, with some experts doubting its status as a mental condition at all. Still, worth exploring through ambient drone, where one’s psyche is already overcome by sound.

Call Of The North traces the path of succumbing to piblokto. The first few tracks set the mood (Without The Sun, Aurora), segueing into the album’s centre as the condition takes hold. This includes an actual recording of a yukutish man taken over with Arctic hysteria (erm, in the track Arctic Hysteria), in the form of singing as dogs bark and a fire crackles – so very Biosphere. Finally, the album ends in Freezing and Cold Wasteland, wherein I picture our sufferer followed that calling of the north too far into the icy plains of the poles. Darn tricksy aurora.