This Swedish-released compilation collects an assortment of recordings from Conversations About The Light, an excellent deathdrone / heavy noise project that has been busy releasing some solid slabs of mysterious ambience for the past couple of years. Most of the music documented here comes from earlier material that was released in extremely small runs on CD-R, although some unreleased material has also been included. Issued in a micro edition of 150 copies, this disc is highly recommended to fans of seriously dark and heavy tectonic drone. The opening track "Death Tree" is the most recent recording from 2006, a nightmarish 15 minute sprawl of deep, rumbling drones, growling distorted guitar noise, and splatters of harsh processed noise. That peice is really cool, mixing together elements of death ambience, noise, and earth shaking power drones. The following four tracks come off of the Postmeridian and Weary 3" CD-R that came out in 2005 - we actually still have one or two copies of that floating around here at Crucial Blast. These are more slowly developing, metallic droneworks, with CATL's Robert Hunter O. creating a tapestry of deep, rumbling, almost metallic feedback drones and eerie industrial whirr that gradually builds in volume and density, frequently punctuated with sheets of shimmering high-end feedback and piercing noise flutter. There are even a few moments where an electronic melody will surface, which reminds us of a harsher, less dreamy Troum.

"Ephemeral Architecture" is from a 2004 split release with Hum Of The Druid, and is on the more melodic side of CATL's droneworks, with haunting soft guitar melodies floating over a sea of murky phasing frequencies. The tracks from 2003's 3" CD-R Unfinished Poem for January Second make up CATL's most varied work, veering between blasts of violent noise walls and sickening sinewave assaults to more of his creepy subterranean ambience. The This Is Not My Home CD-R material from 2003 is our favorite stuff on this CD, especially the monstrous swirling ambient noise metal of "This Is Not My Home II", which sounds like a doom metal band slowed down to the point of becoming a massive murky smear of hyper abstract heaviness, hellish guitar solos melting and raining down from a toxic sky, gigantic riffs rendered into blurry blasts of oozing formless sludge. That track alone is reason enough for us to pick this up!

The final two tracks are previously unreleased material that dates back to 2005 and 2000, and range from ultraviolent assaults of seething death electronics to weird, almost percussive ambient blastnoise.

Altogether this is an excellent collection of material from one of the more overlooked denizens of the heavy drone/noise set, with some supremely metallic moments that had us ecstatic! The vibe of Conversation About The Light is consistently dark and ominous, yet varied enough that it touches on everything from abstract drone-metal to RRR style white noise to Lustmordian ambience. Great gloomy looking package too, with a low-contrast, black metal style design.