Veiled Monk - The Arbiter & The Demiurge
The second release from this mysterious U.S dark-ambient project, being released on the U.K/U.S label Cephalopagus Records. This is also the first physical album which the label has released, a fantastic looking digipack with hand-drawn artwork (As I have been told!). The album was released back on 29th of January 2018, so it´s still pretty new and fresh!. So, let us try to... unveil this monk!
What does the title of the album suggest, what theme do we have here? Well, it practically means the/a Judge and the/a master of Gnosticism. That master of Gnosticism may well be someone who calls himself Yaldabaoth. According to the legends, the world was created by seven Archons who were in-turn servants of the Demiurge (Yaldabaoth). This demiurge was the creator-god, something which stood between humans and God (more or less). The cover artwork also shows the Demiurge, as i found out via Internet sources:
"A lion-faced deity found on a Gnostic gem in Bernard de Montfaucon's L'antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures may be a depiction of the Demiurge."
The big question remains, who is the Arbiter then?. Guess it may be us... humans?. Do we dare to call our selfs "judges" in front of a creator god? I don't know... but in any case, if you (or anyone else for that matter) really want/wanted to be closer to God then the goal may be obtained via Gnosticism. And what Gnosticism is, well... I am no expert. I can only reveal this to you:
Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek: γνωστικός gnostikos, "having knowledge", from γνῶσις gnōsis, knowledge) is a modern name for a variety of ancient religious ideas and systems, originating in Jewish-Christian mileus in the first and second century AD. Based on their readings of the Torah and other Biblical writings, these systems believed that the material world is created by an emanation of the highest God, trapping the Divine spark within the human body. This Divine spark could be liberated by gnosis.
Woawww... Let us take a break from the heavy academic theme here and let us ask ourselves this; Does the recorded music work with the artwork and the highly mysterious esoteric theme?. Well yes, let me explain!
Synth based and beautiful multi-layered dark-ambient with string-drones plus occasional ceremonious voices. As I have mentioned before, I am not much into modern and spacy dark-ambient BUT... This album really works for me. It seems VERY sincere and honest, not just another dark-ambient artist doing the paul-stretch effect as a mean to catch that ´Lustmord-or-Raison-D´être´ wipe (Whatever that is). You can really sense and feel that the artist has worked hard on this, something of his own creation 100%. And the achievement is marvelous! I don´t feel like describing each track for the reader here... since I feel that the listener should try to explore the experience him/herself. An incredible album is all that I can tell you. Numerous/repetitive listening is recommended, a lot of sound layers and a lot of ways of mentally digesting this ambient album. Worth your time, sure worth mine!.
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