This offering on the altar of music is a mesmeric slow burner. It goes to work on me like a time released medication. Strains of flute, bells, and synthesizer swirls gradually encompass me, infecting my blood stream with their calmness, before the levels are elevated into a heady pulsating crispness. Temple Music is an offshoot project started by Alan Trench of the British dark folk band Orchis and an ex-proprietor of the now deceased World Serpent label. After his first Temple Music release he was joined by Stephen Robinson. Together, on this limited release of 300, (distributed by AntiClock Records in the US, purveyors of fine titles from Language of Light, Ctephin and others), they have created an immersive sound-world blending elements of ritualistic drone, string band like avant-folk, and moments of blistering krautrock assaults. There are four movements on the disc, mixed as one continuous hour long piece.
At the beginning of the first movement, "There Is No Light And I Cannot Get Out," a female voice announces "The fountainhead decays," but from my point of view this has nothing to do with the desultory works of Ayn Rand, unless it is a comment on the bankruptcy of her philosophy. The voice continues, at intervals throughout the disc, reading a poetic text in a voice suitable for a guided meditation. Not that her words aren’t enunciated with enthusiasm, just that dynamically they remain at a consistent volume and tone. Lisa and Tracy are given credit for the vocals, but they are blended with such skill I couldn’t tell one from the other.
Electric guitar pickings and a dense drone pull listeners in on their stream of consciousness meanderings, while a slow bass throb fills out the bottom end. Sprinkles of bells add a perfume of mystery which further emerges in the vaporous trills of a flute or recorder. I begin to get the sense that I am outside somewhere at night, perhaps near a secret grotto, or approaching a sacred grove: samples of crickets or other nocturnal insects oscillate between the left and right speakers, forming a murmuring foundation. Slow LFO sweeps and mournful arpeggio begin to susurrate as the movement fades out, the illustrious tour guide announcing I am "in a dream."
Synth and bells push things along again in "Your Children Are Our Future." This is the most sinister sounding part of the whole album. Doors creak, electronics crackle. The innocence of childhood is not so much present as is a host of adult fears and uncertainties. Eventually guitars and other plucked instruments return, as if to dispel the darkness which had been conjured. The music picks up speed in the raucous "House In The Snow." It still starts off ominous, the warbling electronic backdrop accompanied for a time only by the chittering insects. Drums, provided by Kosmicheboy, fill out the palette nicely at a time in the album that otherwise could have been boring, if the pace hadn’t changed. A sense of urgency is also finally emerging from the chords of the vocalist. Amidst all the myriad transformations and movements here, the lyrical recitation is a constant thread winding through the maze.
The last movement has the appropriate title "Soon Death Come." If the voices are a string, here that string become unraveled, slowly overwhelmed by majestic guitar chords and shimmering synthesizer, which leads outwards from the labyrinth of life, into the white light of death. In this setting, death isn’t scary, something to be feared, but a release, a letting go. Smatterings of a steam like hiss, or of train wheels grinding on the rails, seep towards the foreground at the very end, leaving the station, traveling off into unknown worlds.
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