Misa Tridente / Lacrimi Si Sfinti / Inselberg -  The Pact

We get to review another release from French-based Cioran Records. A sort of compilation featuring 3 acts, or could we call it a threesome-based concept album? Misa Tridente is from Spain, Lacrimi Si Sfinti is also from Spain, and Inselberg is from France. Two first acts have also been released on the Spanish label Marbre Negre, I have also had the pleasure of reviewing Lacrimi Si Sfinti some years ago. All three acts work within the fields of ritual and experimental dark ambient music. 

Again, I love the artwork made by Cioran Records. The album comes as a beautiful DVD-sized 6-paneled digipack. Front-cover artwork, think it shows hell in some way? Kind of a collage, gripping hands reaching out for help, and some confused naked humans trying... to find a way out of the place. The ground itself looks kind of organic. Really love the artwork here, always a good thing to look at while listening to the album. 

The first act on the CD is Misa Tridente with the track called In Béllùm. Tried doing some research regarding the mysterious title of the track, but couldn't find much... other than it meant Into Battle. A cave-kind of reverbed soundscape greets the listener with some additional shimmering bells, and some kind of moaning drones... almost resampling a human voice. A dominating Diamanda Galás kind of vocal punctuates the silence, love the extra echoed layers put into the voice. There is a creepy kind of... sound in there as well? Sounds a bit like... some sort of alarm... or the kind found in Throbbing Gristle´s Hamburger Lady or Leather Nun´s Slow Death? Later on, we have a distorted vocal added, male-sounding if you ask me. Some evocative synth is added, and some kind of string works as well. It´s all a VERY dark, beautiful, and ritualistic piece, offering a really intense moment worth listening to. The sound of it is absolutely superb! Fans of Aghast and MZ.412 should definitely check this out for sure! Can´t help to think back to Stuart Gordan´s H.P Lovecraft movie Dagon, where a female deep-one/human-hybrid evokes a Cthulhu rite in Spanish while sacrificing a human female to their Great Old One named Dagon. Dagon would then impregnate her offcourse... anyways!  

Next track is by Lacrimi Si Sfinti, called Miserere. Probably something about... misery. A humming and constant sound of 100 frozen strings, and yes... we are still in the bowels of a deep underground cave. Painful and torturous violin strings are in the background, while the intensity of horrific ambient soundscapes slowly turns up the volume. Organ/wind-driven sounds are added, such as hypnotic vocal chanting, and a really hellish recording of glass shards being driven into the strings of an electrified harp! A mixture of ritual ambiance and improvised harsh-noise aesthetics. Plenty of misery here so far! Sounds like Tibetan monks in hell. Incredible evocative, and what an atmosphere! 

The third and last track by Inselberg is called Sparsum Cruorem Posibus Vastator Horret Angelis *takes a deep breather*. Roughly translated on Google Translator as The Angel Is Horrified By The Scattered Blood Of The Posts Of The Devastator. A gothic horror introduction of someone ( I think! ) trying to pry open a coffin with the church bells going on in the background. The sound of splintering wood is quite an ear-candy thing here! The slow-downed sound of a priest mesmerizing his words for the funeral rite, is the sound of wood just the sound of wood being pressured by the sheer weight of the soil? Not sure, the whole thing is incredibly beautiful sounding. More driven towards angelic ambient moods here, than hellish here. Not trying to sound like a boy-scout here, but so far my favorite track is this one. Kind of a trip back to Brian Eno´s Ambient 4 On Land and Klaus Schulze. It´s just really well-made ambient music, in my experience... making ambient music that just works... is a rare thing. But I know that it´s a matter of taste! 

All in all, it IS an incredible concept album with three highly dedicated acts. It took me about, 20 listening to get to the core of it. And I enjoyed it every time I heard it. But to put words on it, was kind of hard. Being quite atmospheric and ambient-based, also being very direct and almost aggressive as well. It´s a complex beast, but a beast everyone can understand after a listen or two. I like it, and would love to hear it again... and again. 

Bandcamp (label):

https://cioranrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-pact

Bandcamp ( Misa Tridente ):

https://misatridente.bandcamp.com/music

Bandcamp ( Inselberg ):

https://inselberg1.bandcamp.com/

         

 

 Gnostic Grain - Chalice

Gnostic Grain is a 2-man band from the UK which started back in 2020. So far they have released several albums, which are obtainable via their Bandcamp site. The idea behind the band is the wish to explore the world of dark-ambient electronic music, while also being reflective of our distant past and using modern technology to achieve it. Chalice is their fourth album, and being more of an album with a focus on the vocal parts. It´s a 5 track album, 45 minutes in total. So far there isn´t a physical release out, but maybe there will be in the future. I have a certain stomach feeling about this act, I sense a bright future ( for some reason).

The first track is called Unheard. Someone having a walk in an underground sewer, sounds of distant birds and the distant sea as well? It stops when a haunting electronic soundtrack melody fades in, with incredible atmospheric sounds going on there as well. In comes the vocals, a deep and mesmerizing male vocal with a lovely British accent (I'm an anglophile in case u didn't know). The first thing that gets into my mind is offcourse Coil, Attrition, and later TG but also with a touch of the more electronic-driven Ulver. Absolutely jaw-dropping material here! Love the synthy xylophones and the violins! 

The second track Uber Alles starts with ritualistic chanting and drums, a beautiful melancholic piano part, awesome goosebumps vocals, and really eerie drone parts. Again with the synthy violins, the element of doom and darkness is quite certain here... being more in the cosmic-horror section. Later on, a cool organ is added, and a kind of doom's trip-hop rhythm... really dramatic! Fans of Deutsch Nepal would also love this. The apocalypse is surely here, lyrics like ´The night turned black, and the smoke chokes all the people´.

The third track is Chalice. Breathing in and out, dripping sounds in the cave, and a melody... a melody which (for some reason) takes me back to the first Terminator film or John Carpenter's The Thing. It´s still, pretty jaw-dropping... the mysterious and esoteric feel is being quite effective here. Certain moods going on in here, the sort of stuff that happens at night time. The sort of stuff that goes on when (almost) everyone, is asleep. Stuff that goes unseen, unheard. A jazzy saxophone kicks in to enlighten the big city mood just a bit more, we really more saxophones in dark-ambient stuff ( I mean really! ). At this point, I´m a fan of this act!

The fourth track Opiate continues with an awesome synth and piano part. With that excellent piece lyric, ´The night is still a secret from the day, as I crawl back into my dreams´. A tragic, beautiful, and sad song bout an Opiate addict, about how ´When the night steals the day. Incredible track!

The fifth (and last track) called Prawda, is the most ambient/drone-driven track on the album. A slowly rising atmosphere is at work, with some additional chanting vocals in there as well. When the eerie saxophone kicks in, there is a kind of Nurse With Wound vibe. A mechanized female spoken-word is there, is it some kind of Scandinavian language... Finnish?... Not sure. Beautiful ending and a beautiful start, all is good!.

As I mentioned earlier, I´m a fan of Gnostic Grain. Everything is inventive, spotless, beautiful, and incredibly adventurous! Although the Coil resemblance is there, u still (as a listener) receive the feeling of treading into completely unknown waters. Throughout the entire album, Gnostic Grain manages to tell the tale... that there is something hidden in the dark, too dark for any human mind to understand. And it´s there, hidden... and waiting. It´s absolutely incredible! Can´t wait to review these guys again! 

Bandcamp (band):

https://gnosticgrain.bandcamp.com/album/chalice

Dreamrecorder - First Test Replications

Always nice to know when something interesting and different is happening in my mother country... Denmark that is. This release is definitely one more of them. This release has been released on a label called Thank You Tapes, a label being maintained by the same guy behind this project. As for now, he solely releases his own music on the label, but will hopefully (shortly) release other artists. The same guy also works under the Skidtmads alias and among cool projects as well, you can check them all in the Bandcamp link provided below.

This project called Dreamrecorder is solely based on the dreams of the artist himself. He has had ideas of having a machine to record the sounds of his dreams, but offcourse we all know that it isn´t actually possible. But anyway, he has tried recreating these dreams into pure analog sound. First Test Replication is a limited cassette, with 5 copies left so be quick! 

The cassette itself comes in a cool-looking soft-plastic cassette box, and the tape itself is pink with a sticker on it. The pinkish artwork shows some s/m-related material, with the tracklisting offcourse. Inside the booklet, we have some extra info and photos regarding the label. I really like the mysterious and fuzzy-looking artwork, nice old-school feels for sure. 14 tracks, 45 minutes.

The first track is called Doctors Appointment. A low-fi analog nightmare representing (I think) the fear of doctors. Chunky analog sounds, manipulated recording/sample of a doctor talking. Takes me back to some of the very early (and first) recordings by Cabaret Voltaire or Esplendor Geometrico. Quite a unique sound.

The second track I Have A Weird Feeling Now gets more into a sort of eerie ambient vibe. Crystal-like tunes from an underground cave, and the reversed sound of a contact-mic getting brushed by a toothbrush. Definitely a dream-driven idea in this. Some of the sounds have been recorded from tape, while the tape head is being tampered with.

The third track Touch My Face (Good Boy) has again a certain nightmarish edginess to it, thinking of extreme performance art here... or some kind of murky porn flick from the 70s.

The fourth track I´m Very Sad About What Happened is filled with analog chaotic glitch sounds and samples. Almost as if there is a melody in the random noises. Bit like the noisy Autechre at times.

We jump further into track 8 called Things Are Not What They Seem. Warped ambient melancholy with flimsy sound-images changes in and out of focus.

And track 9 In Some Sort of Factory Setting, an unrelentless blistering sea of glitches, knops, and turns. And strange electronic humanoid voices in there somewhere as well. 

First Test Replications is a strange, rare, and interesting beast. The feeling of isolation and creating something unique, without belonging to a local scene is obvious. This is a good and refreshing thing since so much is being made out there that sounds like it has been made, with the same ideas... and on the same equipment. Really love how chunky analog sounds get thrashed together into a flimsy digital dream from the past/the future. A term for this tape? Harsh ambient glitch anyone?. Might just be the most unique item to be reviewed on Kalteldur this year, give it a spin!    

     

Bandcamp (label):

https://thank-you-tapes.bandcamp.com/album/first-test-replications

    

Barrera - No Input Can Release Me 

From My Fatherland

From Greece to Spain, from Mai 12 to Barrera. The powerful blows of  HNW continue to flow from the sun-baked parts of Europe. A new album from this relentless Spanish beast, the first time on CD-R, while the other releases have been on cassettes. This is a limited CD-R released on Black Artifact, an experimental US-based noise label from Fort Worth, Texas. The pro-duplicated thing comes in a nifty-looking black poly case, adorned with some gritty WW2 photos showcasing soldiers' wounded and scared faces. There is only one track on the album, a track being 1 hour long. The title of the track is the same as the album title.     

Flickering red flames dance on the motor of an old Spitfire fighter airplane, nosediving while all the splintered parts melt in a roaring sea of fire. Thunderous bass wall, sparks of a high-pitched tone, flickering painful sound-images and then... there is a ghost´s humming sound in there, giving the first 6 minutes a weird paranormal touch. At this point, I'm at 15 minutes. Minor alterations to the overall sound, but it isn´t getting monotonously boring... u get that warm feeling (subconsciously) that it´s a vibrant and living being! At around 25 minutes, it´s almost becoming pleasant. 

Are we being told (through noise) how totalism gets into people´s minds? The expression is constant, obedient, and without breaking a limb ( or thought ) through the process. Like standing in a shower of sharp knives, without shedding a single tear. In a lot of ways, the extremity of this simple beast leads straight back to the early days of NON. Simple, abstract, and incredibly efficient.

Halfway through now ( 31 minutes ) and I am enjoying it more and more. There are some kind of metallic ritualistic elements/sounds in the background, hidden... but they are there. At around 40 minutes, the high-pitched tones have a sort of telegram-sort-of effect, is there a hidden message in there... I'm not sure!

At around 45 minutes, it´s starting to hurt... just slightly. Your ears have been acknowledging and recognizing the sounds within, and at this point, they are telling you that it´s not all that pleasant! but there is a big but! Your mind wants more, so the record keeps on playing!

If you want to enjoy this, then you have to tune your ears (and mind) into complete slow motion. Or better even, the end of time! This album captures a certain conceptual moment in the blink of an eye. The blistering storm of trench soldiers in the 1WW, or the screaming sounds of German Stuka-bombers in the 2WW. It´s brutal and constant, and the thing keeps on pounding! Without a doubt, the most extreme noise-related thing of 2024!

Bandcamp (label):

https://blackartifact.bandcamp.com/album/no-input-can-release-me-from-my-fatherland