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This endearingly odd, gutsy, and oft-surprising compilation unearths 16 long-forgotten and hard-to-find singer/songwriter gems from the '60s and early '70s. While most of the songs superficially could be labeled as "folk," there is very little here that could be considered formulaic, commercial, or uninspired. For better or worse, these idiosyncratic and intense young women followed their muses down some pretty bizarre paths: some haunting, some beautiful, some crazy, and some just utterly mystifying.
Past & Present
This album did not make much of an impact on me the first few times that I heard it, aside from the instantly gratifying highlights of Anna Black’s Nina Simone-esque cover of timeless suicide anthem “Gloomy Sunday” and Mary McCaslin’s bleak interpretation of The Supremes' “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.” As I listened to it more and more, however, I began to notice the lyrics and it began dawning on me just how warped and unique many of these songs are: most of these ladies had some seriously heavy shit that they wanted to convey (albeit often in a drug-, J.R.R. Tolkien-, or God-damaged way). Admittedly, ambition far overreaches talent in some cases, but it certainly makes for a singularly compelling listen. The earnestness required to compose a song about a “candle that burns through the darkness and ignorance of man” or an imaginary dialogue with Satan is a rare commodity these days.
Women Blue is packed full of ear-catching moments, but one of the more noteworthy ones is Michele’s bizarrely hostile torch song “Blind as You Are,” which features spacey electronic flourishes beneath its coldly brutal musings (“You can die, blind as you are. No one will care.”) and urges listeners to “break down the Babylonian wall.” Of course, there are also a number of songs that are just plain good in a relatively straightforward way, particularly Kathy McCord’s powerful “I Will Never Be Alone Again” and Rosalie Sorrels’ dark and twangy “In The Quiet Country of Your Eyes.” Also, I don’t usually get very exited about liner notes, but I found many of the artist’s stories intriguing (Michele was rumored to be an actual broomstick-riding witch, for example) and useful in providing context. I sure wish there was a lyric sheet though.
The two artists that definitively cement Women Blue’s essentiality for me are Amanda Trees and Dayle Stanley. Both veer quite decisively into the realm of outsider art and, unsurprisingly, both women are shrouded in mystery. Stanley was active in the Boston folk scene in the early '60s, but disappeared after releasing two well-regarded albums. Her “Cry The Mountains White” is notable for several reasons: for one, she belts it out like she is auditioning for a high school talent show; secondly, she often yodels in a bizarre, underwater-sounding way; and finally, her lyrics are deeply odd and seem to combine Lord of the Rings-esque mythology with details of her own life (“If I could go, I’d follow you to the hateful mountains white, Steven.”). Trees (about whom virtually nothing is known) is a bit more understated, fragile, and conventionally melodic in her delivery, but her lyrics are exponentially weirder still: “Queen Wilhelmina” tackles snow, scarves, horse-drawn spaceships, ghosts, gardens, Wall Street, and disillusionment with her friends all within a roughly four minute span. It isn’t quite stream-of-consciousness, either; it actually seems like Trees believes there to be a perfectly plausible narrative arc linking everything together. Both women seem far too effortlessly surreal and uncommercial to have ever made it into a recording studio or convinced anyone to release their albums, but I am certainly happy that they did.
Woman Blue is a truly impressive curatorial achievement, as Past & Present has plucked a uniformly compelling batch of songs from the deepest depths of obscurity and rarity (I tried to track down an Amanda Trees album and could only find one available in the entire world...in Greece.). More importantly, however, these eclectic songstresses each had their own unique vision and sang with a great deal of conviction. This is serious art, not failed pop music. No one featured on this album got here simply because they wrote a pleasant melody or had a nice voice, these women were swinging for the fences (so to speak). Anyone interested in folk music will find a lot to like here, but the truly revelatory moments are reserved for those in search of inspired eccentricity and general soul-baring weirdness.
samples:
- Kathy McCord – I Will Never Be Alone Again
- Anna Black – Gloomy Sunday
- Amanda Trees – Queen Wilhelmina
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This endearingly odd, gutsy, and oft-surprising compilation unearths 16 long-forgotten and hard-to-find singer/songwriter gems from the '60s and early '70s. While most of the songs superficially could be labeled as "folk," there is very little here that could be considered formulaic, commercial, or uninspired. For better or worse, these idiosyncratic and intense young women followed their muses down some pretty bizarre paths: some haunting, some beautiful, some crazy, and some just utterly mystifying.
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Whether paired with Taylor Richardson (Infinity Window) or solo (Oneohtrix Point Never), Daniel Lopatin rarely strays from the world of science fiction. Each synthesized note; each string of composition; each fractured note a piece of a world once brought to us by Carl Sagan and Leonard Nimoy. Zones Without People continues to explore the vast virginal openness that is space—and like the atmosphere he deftly reproduces in sound, Lopatin's boundaries are always contracting and expanding to create music for all beings of the universe.The supposed sound of the future has been created since man's first encounters with the heavens and stars. From ancient civilizations to modern times, jacks of all trades have been plying their craft in hopes of capturing the essence of space. Somewhere in the Mid-20th Century, our infatuation with space exploration, the idea of unidentified objects, and the secrets of the cosmos began infiltrating all walks of life. Pop culture began to engulf the idea of space with the creation of hokey trinkets, pointless cross-promotions, and a campiness that by today's standards seems misguided. Whether it was Mel Torme singing about the moon and stars or The Jetsons creating a generation longing for flying, folding cars and housekeeping robots, the universe became the butt of a colossal joke.
After man landed on the moon and pride turned to nostalgia, a sea of musicians began to transform the swinging ideas of lounge acts and studio executives into darker expanses, viewing space their ebon-tinged prism only few dared to view. The synthesizer became the otherworldly tool to accomplish such feats but it quickly became another rotting piece of technology gone to waste by lazy dreamers. So imagine the surprise when the synth began making its long-awaited comeback in the bedrooms of musicians intrigued by Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel. These new creations weren't just looking to capture the grandiose feel of their 1970s influences but were also tapping into that 1950s fantasy of the future. Modern technology has allowed us to take those visions of our elder kin and breathe renewed life into them, which exactly why Oneohtrix Point Never's Zones Without People is a rousing success.
Zones Without People is the spastic cousin of Clint Mansell's soundtrack to the recent sci-fi film, Moon. Where Mansell built spatial melodies around isolation, Lopatin's synth-and-bleep collage bridges the emptiness of space with the fertile imagination of the science geek in all of us. Zones Without People is the sound of haywire robots ("Learning to Control Myself"), malfunctioning spacecrafts ("Format and Journey North"), and shooting stars ("Hyperdawn") all wrapped within the universe's infinite expansion. Rather than separate his 8-bit sound effects and his lush synth drones, Lopatin marries the two in perfect harmony. The mechanisms we've associated with space exploration thanks to countless films and documentaries are funneled through Lopatin's rich textures, producing the quintessential sci-fi album for anyone who adores how previous generations interpreted the music of the planets.
Daniel Lopatin does not shy away from the sounds of high school science films nor is he afraid of creating music with boundaries, which is why Zones Without People will continually amaze. Lopatin's latest puts a whole new spin on the cliché, "It's a grower"—as just in space, Zones Without People is ever-growing with the reverberations of one big bang.
samples:
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This Japanese trio have obviously been working hard since 2005’s Dissected Humanity as this tape demonstrates. Human Lust (although not exactly tearing up the rulebook) sees the band pushing their filth even further. Here their music is slower and more brutal than before, making the music something genuinely unpleasant. This is the lead of old school New Orleans sludge and the rusty blade of Florida death metal being combined to make a disturbing and heavy alloy.
Dissected Humanity was a serviceable if forgettable album; to my ears Anatomia made the kind of death metal that has been done to, well, death since it was perfected in the early '90s. Their worship of classic death metal is more than obvious from the moment I opened the package containing Human Lust. This tape looks exactly like a holy relic from the golden age of death metal with its Xeroxed cover, gory Lovecraftian artwork and a polite thank you note from the band to the purchaser.
Over the course of the three songs on the cassette, Anatomia shroud their old school violence in more darkness. Elements of Eyehategod and Obituary echo down the chasm that Anatomia have created. As with Dissected Humanity, this is not paradigm shifting reinvention but Human Lust is an awesome and thrilling release.
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Artist: All Hail The Transcending Ghost
Title: All Hail The Transcending Ghost
Catalogue No: CSR122CD
Barcode: 8 2356648912 2
Format: CD in jewelcase
Genre: Dark Ambient / Guitar Drone
Shipping: Now
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Cold Spring are proud to announce the debut album from All Hail The Transcending Ghost - a joint collaboration between Henrik Nordvargr Björkk (MZ.412, Toroidh, Folkstorm etc) and Tim Bertilsson (Switchblade, Fear Falls Burning). Together the Swedish legends have created arguably one of the most haunting drone-dark-ambient-industrial works in recent years, invoking the spirits of old Nordvargr, meets the sludge-doom vibe of Tim's hellish guitar. This has to be the most unsettling work from Nordvargr, as the man himself states: "truly the most scary music I have ever recorded". An icy chill down your spine... a cold hand on your shoulder... you are never alone in the darkness.
Tracks: 1. Intornator | 2. Untitled | 3. Untitled | 4. Untitled | 5. Untitled | 6. Untitled | 7. We Break The Seals Of Scattered Hopes
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Every great once in awhile an album comes along that completely blows me away. This is one of them. Within the first few chords of the opening song I can feel Overloaded Ark singing in my bones. It is an album that reminds me of the power music has for elevating the mind and spirit. When listening to these songs it is hard to be unmoved and unhappy. Overloaded Ark is rapture made audible, joy stirred by a resonant interplay of voice and strings, a pure sonorous ecstasy.
Helena Espvall and Masaki Batoh expand upon the stratagem they began on their first self-titled album, by recording a mixture of pieces they wrote themselves, and those of a repertoire drawn from sources as diverse as late renaissance classical and the Cuban folk music of Silvio Rodriguez. The result of their efforts is a work of impressive unity, the cover versions and traditional music they play blending seamlessly with their own songwriting. The virtuosic performances are made all the more gripping by being bathed in a psychedelic infusion of electronics that ranges between subtly glowing minutiae to expansive over arching effects.
The album opens with a version of the medieval Salterello, here called “Little Blue Dragon,” a piece of merry exuberance. These initials sounds of festivity and celebration carry over throughout the course of the album, even its darker moments; and it is here that one of the key players, Haruo Kondo, first shows off his skill as a specialist in ancient musical instruments. The sounds of old world woodwinds like the crumhorn and rauschpfeife, along with the drones of the hurdy gurdy perambulate their way throughout the album. The driving force of the drums, played by Batoh’s fellow member in Ghost, Junzo Tateiwa, carry over from the Salterello into the powerfully tribal title track. He beats on the frame drum like a shaman, with the steady syncopations that can easily put anyone into a light trance. Wind like textures flutter through an electronic breeze. The song pauses briefly for a burst of high frequency electronics that cause my head to buzz pleasantly, as if the sound is emerging from inside my skull. A strummed chord on an acoustic guitar helps to keep the beat while buzzing wind instruments and cello dance in curving melodious spirals. The pressure inside “Overloaded Ark” keeps building up, eventually spinning into a controlled yet spastic frenzy.
Helena’s talent, not only as a cellist, but as a vocalist is fully displayed on this album. She confidently sings beautifully in several different languages: Spanish, French, and Japanese. In “Sueno Con Serpientes” (originally by Rodriguez) her voice is silken, pure, and heartfelt. I may not understand a word of it, but she is able to carry a feeling of deep emotion that resonates across any barriers of language. This song also remains faithful to the original, while at the same time embellishing it, updating it, adding more reverb and electronic innuendo to sounds that were only implied and hinted at in the first, perhaps not being technically feasible at the time. On “Until Tomorrow,” one of the originals, she sings in emotive cries, the same ancient non-language she used so well in her work with Anahita. Batoh’s voice joins Helena’s in thick whispers, swishes, and swoops. His guitar playing on this song is liquid, like a mountain stream tumbling over rocks. If it were poetry it would be lyrical.
The album ends with a loving rendition of “Sham No Umi,” a song from Batoh’s back catalogue. Here once again, Helena’s vocals shine, with Batoh’s buried slightly underneath. It is one of those songs I start over and over again after completing. The guitar playing is hypnotic and lilting, joyfully lighthearted and technically complex: in other words, exceptional. A shimmering piano played by Kazuo Ogino underscores the guitar adding weight and emphasis. A few minutes in and the trill of a synth marks the point where all gravity is left behind. This song stays stuck in my head for days on end, bringing me much happiness. And it’s just one great tune among many that make Overloaded Ark one of the finest records to have come out this year.
samples:
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As a member of the Roll Over Rover roster, a Bay Area based group of musicians headed by Sean McCann, Kellen Shipley continues in the label’s pioneering spirit of bridging the varied forms of experimental music with the pop medium so many embraced as children and have reluctantly held onto as tastes have shifted and moods changed. Deep Breaths, for all its avant pretense, finds Shipley comfortably navigating the choppy waters of blending fresh and salt water with a potent combination of carefully crafted drones amid churning pop melodies.
“Old Birds, New Nest” could do no more to cement the overtones of Kellen Shipley (Bats in the Belfry)’s solo debut. Rich drones mirroring the echo of submarine sonar blend with the raw sounds of Dave McPeters’ organ and bird chirps. The atmosphere is one of morning fog, blanketing the damp earth after a night of unrest as if to signify a new beginning—for Shipley and for the listener.
Deep Breaths maintains its spectral drone throughout its 18 minutes of meditative dismay, but it is what Shipley and his buddies produce under the suffocating mist that breeds warmth beneath the frozen tundra. “Above and the Below the Surface” begins where “Old Birds, New Nest” left off, utilizing a swirl of subtle guitar effects that mimic the sound of dew gently falling on the soft, morning soil. The peaceful mantra is interrupted with a poppy loop of psychedelic wah and hambone drums before the drone rises to swallow it whole. The same idea is presented within “My First Surfboard,” though the roles are reversed, with the drone becoming a silent partner as the Dave McPeters’ organ churns out a happy Monkey Grinder tune to compliment Shipley’s growling guitar.
It’s when Deep Breaths allows the drone to subside that the album finds its stride. “Shades and Shadows” hearkens to the solemn guitar dirges of Richard Thompson’s Grizzly Man and Neil Young’s Dead Man, as Roll Over Rover label head Sean McCann supplants Shipley’s metallic plucks with crying bows of viola, adding an emotional depth not unlike bagpipe versions of “Amazing Grace.” Bats in the Belfry bandmate, Ashlinn Smith joins Shipley on the spatial finale, “Solstice Day Parade.” Rather than pack the album back in drone Styrofoam, the two playfully intertwine halting guitar chimes with lilting notes from a pennywhistle, churning out an organic drone of nothing more than hushed feedback and calming breaths.
A strong blend of meditative drone and brooding guitar, Deep Breaths is the clichéd breath of fresh air in pop experimentation. No longer must popular and avant music hide their undying love, for Kellen Shipley has made it possible for both to walk hand-in-hand as the heavy fogs of drone roll in under the cover of night.
samples
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In a perfect world, Marielle Jakobsons' blackened and visceral monster of a solo debut would cause legions of uninspired drone artists to smash their laptops and sine oscillators in frustration and scurry about trying to find something else to do. I suspect that probably will not happen, but Ore is nevertheless one singularly scary, fully-formed, and brilliant work.
I was unfamiliar with any of Marielle Jakobsons' work prior to hearing Ore, but she is perhaps best known as one half of the electroacoustic chamber music duo Myrmyr (though she has also worked with folks like Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Fred Frith, and Iannis Xenakis' UPIC machine in various capacities).Also, she has recently begun collaborating with Gregg Kowalsky in the Indian classical music-inspired Date Palms.However, neither of those groups has released an official album yet, so Darwinsbitch will likely be most people's first exposure to Jakobsons' artistry.Fortunately, that is exactly how it should be: while both projects are intriguing and show that Marielle is quite a versatile musician (she is a classically-trained violinist/pianist), neither comes close to capturing the sheer heaviness and demonic slow-burning intensity that she is capable of on her own.
Ore begins with sound of a cold wind and an ominous, oscillating low drone.Gradually, "Iron Lake" coheres into a quivering haze of electronics being slowly sawed apart by the bowing of an electrified violin before eventually giving way to a haunting interlude of melancholy strings and cavernous low-end surges.Other elements are subtly added, such as mysterious field recordings, foreboding rumblings, and heavily reverbed piano, but the atmosphere remains stark, unsettling, and eerily beautiful throughout the course of its eleven minutes.I am struck by the sheer purposefulness of Jakobsons' aesthetic: while often quite dense and complex, it never seems like there is anything extraneous or left to chance.Being that meticulous can often lead to music that feels overworked or listless, but Ore is both decidedly organic and coursing with dark emotion.
The rest of the album unfolds in similarly excellent and crushing fashion, but I especially enjoyed "Induction Cuts" and "Shadow-Leaves."  The former begins with swirling, clashing wall of dissonant drones before dissipating into a solo mournful violin and some odd hollow metallic percussion supported by a shifting disquieting thicket of notes of varying textures.The closing piece, "Shadow-Leaves," fades in with a gradually intensifying sheet of glimmering, shuddering ambiance before being joined by a creepy plinking piano and a snarl of microtonally shifting and snaking violin drones.As it progresses, the focus glacially shifts between instruments and motifs and balances beautifully between tension, atmosphere, and musicality.I especially loved the bizarre detuning (Indian?) stringed instrument interlude near the end.
This is, quite simply, a staggering album.Jakobsons is a master at her craft: her understanding of nuance, dynamics, harmony, and tension is without peer in the drone genre.I have absolutely no idea where she can go from here.While I am understandably loath to disparage the immortal Charlie Daniels Band, I think Satan would probably be far more intimidated and unnerved by the fiddlin' on Ore than the ostentatious shredding featured in "The Devil Went Down to Georgia."
Samples:
 
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While ostensibly only a mere remix album, this is actually something far more miraculous and novel: a second chance. The original All is Wild, All is Silent was a frustrating and somewhat clumsy album by a generally good band that seemed to have lost their way. Fortunately, eleven of Balmorhea’s talented pals have helpfully erased their mistakes and resurrected the material as a far more compelling and impressive work. Every band should get friends like these.
All is Wild, All Is Silent was Balmorhea’s first album with an expanded line-up and its heft and drama marked a jarring transition (for me, anyway) away from the elegant simplicity of their earlier work. Consequently, I was not particularly enthusiastic about hearing this remix album until I realized that Xela was involved: I could not even begin to imagine what Balmorhea’s cinematic Americana would sound like after being filtered through John Twells’ misanthropic, black metal-damaged aesthetic. My interest was piqued.
Once I put the album on, however, all thoughts of skipping right to Xela disappeared with the first song: Eluvium’s “Settler.” The 17+ minutes of angelic vocals, cymbal washes, backwards acoustic guitars, treated strings, creaking noises, and warm ambient haze are an absolutely stunning feat of sonic alchemy that caught me completely off-guard. Much to my great pleasure, Eluvium’s piece is not a fluke and instead sets the tone for everything to follow: the bulk of the reworkings here are almost unrecognizably transformed from the original songs and the spirit is much closer to the haunting fragility of the small-scale Balmorhea of old than the current, more lumbering post-rock incarnation.
Most of the best work on the album falls squarely into the ambient/drone category, such as Tiny Vipers, Bexar Bexar, or Rafael Anton Irisarri’s melancholic, glistening piano reinterpretation of “Harm and Boon.” The true highlight here, however, is inarguably Machinefabriek’s quavering, crackling, and absolutely mesmerizing “Remembrance.” While the piece wisely retains some of the organic instrumentation from the original material, such as banjos and stand-up bass, it artfully drowns them in a shifting, oscillating cloud of droning tones and a steadily intensifying loop of disquieting, warped classical vocals. It is a stunning and absolutely flawless work and I'm amazed that it is relegated to a remix album for another band- Rutger Zuydervelt must like the Balmorhea guys a lot.
Of course, there is some stylistic diversity on display too. In particular, Peter Broderick’s spoken-word open letter/choral re-envisioning of “November 1, 1832” is endearingly strange and stirring. Also, Helios turns in a pleasant and delicate IDM-influenced work, while the aforementioned Xela simply opts to envelop the source material in an escalating avalanche of oscillating noise. Jacascek’s bleak but perversely bouncy “Night In the Draw” is also quite noteworthy and occupies a bizarre no-man’s land between IDM, experimentalism, and classical music.
Obviously, some of the remixes included are less inspired than others, but this is generally a surprising and very strong album that completely eclipses its source material. I’ve been listening to it off and on for about a month now and have not grown tired of it yet, which is rather rare for me. Hopefully, Balmorhea have closely examined the Eluvium and Machinefabriek pieces and are tweaking their blueprint accordingly for future releases.
Samples:
- Eluvium - Settler
- Machinefabriek - Remembrance
- Jacaszek – Night In The Draw
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Issued earlier this year as an LP, the latest Final album is rereleased digitally with almost an entire second album’s worth of alternate mixes that combine the strongest moments of Justin Broadrick’s long-standing side project into a single work. It meshes the dark, moody ambience of his discography with the more recently resurrected love of dirty noise into 80 minutes of melancholy melody and speaker shredding squall.
Final started as a noise band by a teenage Justin Broadrick, and was then revived in the mid 1990s as a dark ambient/isolationist project, and is responsible for some of the short-lived genre's best works. Now, in its third phase, Broadrick has combined elements of both previous forms into a newer, evolved sound.
"Right Signal" begins with dirty crunchy bass noise that sounds pulled off of any possible noise record, but paired with melodic ambient synth that ranges from dramatic prog-rock flourishes to dark, horror movie dirges. Synthetic horn fanfares are presented alongside distorted electronic passages with a slow building tension throughout. "Wrong Signal" is initially pure power electronics swell with guitar feedback and noise winding through. Through its 15 minute duration, mournful synths eventually come into focus, calling to mind some of the melancholy moments of 2 but in a far less minimal context.
"Stop at Red" keeps up the darkness by focusing on sparse, treated guitar over a stripped down bed of electronics, eventually being dominated by squealing feedback and raw noise, though the deep, gliding bass sounds never go away. The track ends with the multi-tracked voice of Broadrick (I am assuming) that could be a lost Jesu vocal track. The original material ends with "Green," mixing mostly plaintive guitar playing from Broadrick with more ambient sounds. The guitar has the dreary post-punk sound that a lot of the more recent Jesu work has incorporated, so it is perhaps the closest sounding thing to that project here.
The alternate mix of "Right Signal" pulls some of the harsh electronic elements away while simultaneously adding more film score elements to give it an even more dramatic sound than prior. The shortened alternate edit of "Wrong Signal" filters the noise down to a hushed static, allowing depressive synths to be the focal point.
"Stop at Red" reappears in a stripped down capacity that maintains the darkness of the original, but keeps the rougher elements more at bay. The remix of "Green" mostly treats and cuts up the original guitar, putting it behind the electronic stuff, and is one of the only cases on here where the alternate version is a bit more raw than the original one. The alternate mixes as a whole are pretty different takes on the material, to the point where one can hear the linkage between the two takes, but either would make a strong stand-alone album. Having them both together is just a great thing.
I have consistently considered Final’s 2 and the Urge/Fail 7" among the best dark electronic music I have ever heard some decade-plus since their first release, and that has not changed. Reading All The Right Signals Wrong, however, is one of the definite high moments in the Final discography that successfully incorporates the harsh, noisier stuff alongside the lush ambient moments that characterized the 1990s incarnation of the project. It takes the classically dark, morose power noise of early Maurizio Bianchi, but with a sense of brooding melody which that genre has never been focused on. It is also perhaps the most multifaceted work he has done under this name, and the alternate mixes exclusive to this CD are varied enough to make a more complete release.
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While initially I thought that Luminous Night was a weak follow up to 2007’s Shelter from the Ash, it is obvious from repeated listening sessions that this album is a much more complicated and layered work than Ben Chasny’s previous album. The rich musical tapestry that his group has created here sounds timeless; that inimitable mix of rock, traditional and atmospheric music that sets Chasny and his companions apart from other bands.
Luminous Night feels like a soundtrack more than a traditional album; the scope of feelings and range of the music covered on the album mirror that of a particularly convoluted film. The instrumental “Actaeon’s Fall (Against the Hounds)” that opens the album has a bright, fantastic vibe and it could easily serve as a theme song to one of Jodorowsky’s movies; Ben Chasny’s music has that same sense of wonder and the same revelatory nature as a film like The Holy Mountain.
After the bright introduction, each song becomes progressively darker in mood and content. This gloom combined with the medical theme running through the album (“Anesthesia,” “Cover Your Wounds with the Sky,” etc.) may point to something serious in Chasny’s personal life but whatever that is, he has channelled it into something powerful. During “Ursa Minor” he sings: “This hospital’s no place to say goodbye;” these words combined with Ben’s beautiful acoustic guitar playing makes for a heavy, cathartic moment. The song then disintegrates into recordings of the full band bursting through the walls and the sound of life support machines, creating a deeply emotional and upsetting experience.
Yet, no matter how dark it gets there is always a glimmer of hope shining through. “River of Heaven” recalls Coil’s “Five Minutes After Death” but without the savageness of a murder lurking in the background. Eyvind Kang’s viola lifts this song into a truly spiritual place, riding on the rhythm like a hawk rides on the wind (or like a spirit escaping the body). The hope remains only a glimmer though as the album closes with “Enemies Before the Light,” finishing in a boiling mass of violence. I cannot help but feel that if this was a soundtrack, then this film most certainly does not have a happy ending.
A sad ending is not a bad ending by any means and Luminous Night again shows that Ben Chasny is still operating not just at full strength after over a decade of Six Organs of Admittance. When compared to the massive early years retrospective, RTZ, that came out earlier this year, it is clear hear how Chasny has developed Six Organs. His work over the last few years has come strongly together to make what I feel is one of the most interesting and exciting repertoires in rock music.
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