Winterlandschaft - L'obscurité
Debut release from a project that is active on the new and Polish (and excellent also!) Raven Fortress label. So far the label had released two beautifully looking digipacks from two different projects. This one called Winterlandschaft (Winter Landscapes) and another called Barbaric Frost. I will get to the review of the later release further on. This limited digipack version is a 6 track album, just over 30 minutes of chilly and grim landscapes of coldness and dread. All the tracks on the album don't have any names... just I, II, III, IV, V and VI.
As you can imagine, the cover-artwork tells it all. A hard-working hunchbacked peasant-lady trying desperately to gain use (grow something) with the hard and frozen soil, maybe trying to dig-up lost potatoes in a spot which she hasn´t been digging? The effort might be as fruitless likes the naked trees in the background, finding food or growing it in the harsh wintertime... something u might do when you are feeling the torture of starvation.
A lovely epic (but quiet) minimal piece of cold and morbid dreadness. Winter synth with a tiny touch of murky bit-synth. The first track starts off with a heavy and vibrating moody synth-key, kind of depressing but with a certain relaxing warmth to it. Think it might be the sound of autumn, that certain feeling when you start to notice the brown leaves and the cold rain on your face. Beautiful but also slightly sad. This heavy synth key meets up with a lighter and atmospheric synth, which almost describes the landscape before you. Yes, the flowers are gone and the leaves are falling down to the ground. The Second track welcomes the cold, darkness and frosty autumn nights. The kind of coldness which leaves frost on your window (or car!). The sound of an upcoming winter depression might be on the way. A darker piece than the first one, nonetheless very beautiful and timeless. The Third track welcomes the snow on the early morning, the kind of snow which kills every sound and movement for miles. EVERYTHING just stands completely still! You are also receiving a sense of getting lost in the mesmerizing snowy-landscape, mainly because everything looks the same... snowy white!. A walk to the nearby village (for food) will not be easier, nor will those potatoes you forgot in the soil (oh dear).
The fourth track welcomes the coldness on winter nights, warmth is all that matters!. It sounds like the kind of coldness which sneaks unnoticed into houses, and leaves you dead-cold after several hours. Almost a haunted horror-themed dread here going on! The fifth track welcomes a kind of hopelessness, the kind of hopelessness that pops up when all else had failed. And you accept it, as you are accepting the beautiful (and cruel) side of the winter season. Last sixth track welcomes death, the kind of death which leaves the same kind of quietness which you´ve heard on track three. A quiet and lonely death which (maybe) will be discovered in spring, after all the snow has melted away. A very meditative melancholic and heavy piece of ambient-synth´ness.
A great album with tons of minimalistic cold synth-moods. Highly recommended winter-synth for the lonely cold winter nights. Be quick, few physical copies are remaining on the label´s Bandcamp site!
Bandcamp (label):