For their second album, this trio utilizes traditional and exotic instruments that are refocused digitally into airy, minimalistic atmospheres with a quasi-mystical vibe that's geared more toward darkness than enlightenment.
The production quality is impeccable, yet this gives the music a glassy sheen that keeps it from becoming intimate. For me, songs like "Jisatsu" and "A Few Words Failed" are too cold and clinical to be used for meditative purposes, and too unsettling to be relegated to the background. Things do warm up a bit with the chanting that appears on "East of Now," accompanying instruments that finally reveal their organic origin, but this track almost seems at cross-purposes to what transpires previously. The end of "Our Angels Orbit Future Places" contains a forlorn piano and children's voices that bring out a humanity previously absent, something the group could have explored further.
Much of the material seems to lack something, like vocals or some sort of visual element, but I can see how performed live this really wouldn't be as much of an issue with the proper setting and context. Too many of their sounds, not to mention the mythology they invoke, remind me of Coil, which isn't too great of a leap considering Sion Organ mastered the album, but they do suffer in comparison. Even if not a whole lot of new ground is broken here, they create decent dark ambience, I only wish that there were more things to encounter in the shadows.
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