Talk about ambition, Michael Page has it -- the first track (of two) on this album, "The Synaesthete's Lament," is forty minutes long, essentially an album into itself. A conceptual piece of work designed to evoke the immense emptiness of the cosmos and the enormous distances in a constellation of dying stars, the track is heavily weighted in favor of immense, decaying drones and an omnipresent cloud of sound like a the audio equivalent of an expanding gas nebula. The amorphous dark ambient sound is periodically punctuated by psychedelic touches, includes lots of bleating horns (sax or trumpet -- it's hard to tell), probably courtesy of guest player and Hawkwind guru Nik Turner. It's pretty telling that Turner is on board for this deep-space exploration, because this is definitely in the same vein as Hawkwind's more tripped-out space operas, only here the riffs Hawkwind would have employed to move things forward have been exploded and pulverized into an endless trail of space dust floating on a long stream of solar wind. As with previous Sky Burial compositions, the track remains interesting throughout, despite its length, and while it's subdued enough to work as background listening, it's detailed enough -- and filled with such an interesting variety of sounds -- that it rewards the close listener. The second track, "Within and Without," weighs in at a comparatively svelte sixteen minutes and is a bit more aggressive in sound, with harsh processed sounds mixed in with the cosmic drone, including bits that sound like percussion (or possibly synth beats) tweaked to sound like aliens beating on wood blocks and science-fiction phaser sounds. This actually sounds like an early industrial track retooled for a more ambient, efx-laden sound; it's far more rhythmically active than the first track, but every bit as alien, hinting at unfathomable rituals being held on distant worlds. The great sound is enhanced considerably by adroit mastering from Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu, more side projects than there are stars in the sky), and the equally exceptional packaging includes a full-color fold-out inner poster and another example of the mind-melting psychedelic art deco artwork of Thomas Hooper.Statistik: Verfasst von fire in the head — 27.11.2011 (14:39)
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