search
more stories
 

Aural Holograms - Aural Holograms

print   email   RSS
 March 23 2008 at 07:11:37 PM





 Compiled into three tracks, recorded in three separate countries and by several musicians with ties to both the Finnish electronic and metal underground—including Anti Haapapuro (Dolorian, Aeoga, Halo Manash) and Jussi Saivo (F, Tiermes)—Aural Holograms begins its auspicious triangular engagement in dented, imperfect tones, inky trails, and shrieks of uncertain materials directed toward a frightful communion of sound and perception.

Nebulous in purpose and, like all ambient music, completed by our reception, Holograms is the first entry of a planned series based on primitive call and response patterns released by Haapapuro's Aural Hypnox label, home to an increasingly strange assortment of musicians native to the land of a thousand lakes. This latest attempt at creating an almost visible edifice of sound, one sustained by frequency and furtive voices, is no less effective while conforming to some and replacing other "experimental" clichés in a suspenseful, delicately contrived curse; night music heralded by a night-hag with claws rotating into solar symbols. Rare, however, is the entrance of light into the music's projected shroud and foggy dimensions.

Bodies remain unseen, but not un-sensed through these ambiguous and long unbroken orchestrations of drone—a non-verbal meditation flowing more like a film score than a distorted free-for-all. Its trident initiation, recorded months, even years apart in Guatemala (1992), the Czech Republic (1992), and Finnmark (2002) and named with strange, New Testament-style adumbrations like "Before the Great Stone" and "The Day of Opening the Tomb," occupies a space between Lustmord's Black Star and Wendy Carlos' contributions to Kubrick's The Shining, often feeling conducted rather than collected under the label's signature theme.

The sound itself is ritual, an intersection of dreams drawn along Eastern lines, especially entranced with those formulas of bone and mineral found in the ceremonial music of Tibetan Buddhism. That stringless, atonal phrasing, surrounded by the enduring clamor of drum and bell (teased in the press material only as unspecified artifacts "crafted according to the methods of traditional metallurgia") is here endued with gutting low-end that levels concentration. Thoughts soon focus in on nervous, vagrant tones of the reed organ, blaring beside other scattered miscellanea; their secret origin is a shared interpretation of signals that fret with an icy resonance, notes dropped like wishing stones into a black, murmuring void; the blankness becoming a boggy glade, clandestine voices disturbed by ringing shards of fractal, moon-lit dissonance spread with air trails overhead and afterwards a sound like rotten teeth and dry chattering jaw from a corpse below.

Taped rotations circle en route to Holograms’ taxing 40 minute coda, "Beyond the Black Deep," a magnificent if overdrawn dispensation of ebb and flow minimalism directed by the single chime of a bell, then answered in radial sequences blown and struck from the source as if being formed out of burning hot glass. The previous hour's weighted plunge into anxiety and nyctophobia now rises back to these soft hues of awe and wonder. A skull that becomes a jewel lodged in their crown, beheld with eyes open or closed.

[Todd DePalma]

Aural Holograms
Aural Holograms
2007
Aural Hypnox
http://auralhypnox.com

 

type: reviews    keywords: ambient,   

 
TWITTER RSS FEEDS
categories
138 1970s 33 ac/dc ajna ambient amon another bad idea apocalypse art asia ass cheeks atl atlanta is burning away azagthoth baby warrior drama bazillion points beer ben vierling black metal black metal sublet black sabbath blasphemy blood blue cheer bon scott bone sickness bones books booze boredom brooklyn bros bukkake bullet belts canada canadian mexican food cargo chains chips & beer chips n beer chuck schuldiner cliches codpiece comics conan cooking corpse paint cowbell cross-chatter crust cry babies cycles d&d d.c. danzig david vincent death death metal deceased dei carnifex demo demos denim desecrate devil devilock dffd metal dicks dio dirty south disgruntled dodgy doom dragons dread drinkin drone drugs drunk again dvd ec comics elvis emotions eschatology euronymous's dildo fake fangoria farts feelings fetish film films filth fire florida death metal folk foodster free publicity fulci georgia german germans germans glen benton goats gore grind groupies gygax halloween hard rock hardcore headbanging heat heathen metal heavy heavy metal hell awaits hollywood homeless looking dudes make good music horror horror punk hotlanta ink interview jazz jerseys judas priest kali kenneth anger kill posers king cobra king diamond kiss label profile latin leather lemmy lhp001 lhp002 lhp003 lhp005 lhp006 lhp007 lhp008 lhp009 lhp010 lhp011 lhp012 lhp013 lhp014 lhp015 lhp016 lhp017 lhp018 lhp019 lhp020 lhp021 lhp022 lhp023 lhp024 lhp025 lhp026 lhp027 lhp028 lhp029 lhp030 lhp031 lhp032 lhp033 lhp034 lhp035 lhp036 lhp037 lhp038 lhp039 lhp040 lhp041 lhp042 lhp043 lhp044 lhp046 lhp047 lhp048 lost lucifer lulz magick manilla road marcus garvey master mephistopheles mercyful fate metal metal chef meth mgd misfits morbus chron motorhead mutilation nature nazi gaga necronomicon new york no shit noise norway not black metal not good nwobhm nyc oakleys obama 08 oh death one from the grave pain penbangers pentagram philthy pony girl power metal power trio primer problematic production pulp punk pussy putrid real men listen to thin lizzy rednecks repka reunion riffs motherfucker riot ritual robert e howard rock rush salad days samhain satan savage sword scorpions seagrave shit show report sin nanna skanks slayer sleaze sleeveless slim pickens sludge sluts soulless space cadet speed speed metal spikes spooky fingers steel stranger in a strange land studs summer summoning swamp sweatpants sweden swords tanya roberts teethofskull texas thirsty and miserable thrash thrash metal tits tldr tna tombstones tour dates tremelo tuesday you tube vanguard vans varg vhs vinyl vomit weird woods year end blah year-end list you tube tuesday youth zines zinka zombies