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AETHENOR  Betimes Black Cloudmasses  LP   (VHF)   14.98


Also available on LP!

The second album from the trio Aethenor, a band that features Stephen O'Malley (Sunn O)))/Khanate/KTL/Burning Witch), Daniel O'Sullivan (of Zeuhl-worshipping UK prog masters Guapo), and Vincent De Roguin (of Swiss prog/metal/post-rockers Shora). Aethenor follows up their VHF debut Deep In Ocean Sunk The Lamp Of Light with this new excursion into otherwordly drones, frenetic free-improv percussion, and ghoulish electro-acoustic sonic textures that sounds nothing like what you would expect based on their other bands. Divided into three ten-minute-plus pieces, Betimes Black Cloudmasses explores a similiar creaking world of dark-toned drones and clattering percussion as the first record, seemingly informed by David Jackman's Organum collaborations with Eddie Provost, all creepy dark drift and throbbing low-end, strange metal clanking sounds and haunted organs, super slow moving glacial ambience that sounds more like an abstract film score to an old horror movie than out-and-out dark ambient. The album also features contributions from percussionists Nicolas Field and Alex Babel, who add flurries of splattery, FMP-style free jazz drumming to Aethenor's dark soundworld. The first track opens with distant, whistling high-end drones slowly coming into view, as a repetitive electronic pulse begins to throb like a black heart beating in the middle of a cloud of softly bending feedback and eerie minor key melodies that sound like they are coming out of a tape machine being played backwards. As the track progresses, all kinds of little sonic particles enter into the sound field, from ghostly moaning vocal-like utterances to warbling fragments of pipe organ melodies, and then halfway through the hypnotic ambience is jarred by a scream, and heavy metal chains being dragged across some hard surface. Swells of doomy low-end rumble and spacious percussion rise and recede, surrounded by chimes and thunderous exhaled breaths. Towards the end of the track, dreamy keyboard melodies become more prominent. The second track is even bleaker, a super abstract industrial improv freakout with both of the guest percussionists unleashing a torrent of frenzied free jazz drumming over some sinister sounding electronic sinewave fluctuations, ringing bells, grisly keyboard tinkling, and blasts of torrential noise that rise to a fever pitch. Later though, those chiming bells begin to form into a heavenly choir of nocturnal tones that begins to sound like some fractured 70's krautrock like Klaus Schulze or Tangerine Dream, even as the melodious tinkling is overcome by the rumbling, splattery drumming and clusters of insectile drone. Then the third and final track appears, with all of the preceding sounds stripped away leaving only sparse, random keyboard notes and the dueling free jazz drumming tumbling over each other in dense clots of smacking sticks, bubbling percussion and rushes of cymbal noise. A few minutes into it, the clatter and keys are joined by muttering, worldess vocals, a stream of gutteral babble and grunting (courtesy of Ulver's Kristoffer Rygg) which reminds me of some of Attila Csihar's expressive throat mumble. The rest of the track goes from fluttering high-pitched squeals of feedback that are manipulated into bird-like chirps, distant shadows of distorted guitar, sprinkles of abstract piano and synthesizer, surges of freeform percussion, and creaking wooden noises, and in the last few minutes evolves into an absolutely breathtaking wash of kosmiche bliss. A superbly creepy album.

Packaged in a nice letterpress jacket with artwork from swiss designer Nicola Todeschini.