One of my favorite recent discoveries from the Polish dark ambient/industrial label Beast Of Prey is the Polish outfit Atum, who have two full length releases out on the label. Atum's dark drift exudes a mixture of black ritual ambience and ghostly Amber Asylum-esque atmospherics, and this limited edition release titled HITWA is made up of five movements connected to mystical/geometric concepts that tie in to the album art. The sound on this disc is formed from industrial ambience and stringed instruments, creating crashing waves of digital distortion amid soft swells of low end thrum and eerie droning processed strings on the opening track, and later introducing distant choral voices that drift across an eerie expanse of orchestral dark drift. All of the tracks take their time to unfold and billow outward, often sprawling out for ten minutes or more, and the earlier pieces center around a more desolate form of ambience that sounds like it's probably influenced by the bleak horror of early Cold Meat artists like Megaptera, Raison D'�tre and Atrium Carceri. The second track suggests a Chthonian massiveness as subterranean monstrous breathing heaves amid the sounds of chiming bells singing in the distance and the soft thrum of metallic drones, the swirling clouds of blackness and stretched out string drones joined by clanking metal rhythms. Later on, we hear more of that liturgical chanting, twisting around fragments of orchestral sound and crashing cymbals and gongs. It's the last two tracks where the strings become more prominent in the sound, starting with "IV"'s acoustic guitars and what should like cellos taking form within the fog, the sound transforming into a kind of cinematic dark chamber folk. This carries over into the final song which ends the disc with massive orchestral black ambience, slow shifting clouds of time stretched strings and horns accompanied by spectral wailing choral voices floating through the abyss and vast grinding prayer bowl tones stretches into infinity, a sound that's part Ligeti, part Lustmord, deep and heavy and portentous.
The disc is packaged inside of an odd-size three-panel folder sleeve with the disc attached to the inside panel on a foam hub, each copy hand numbered in an edition of 444 copies.