Another quality release from the Polish dark ambient project Atum, whose mix of blackened Cold Meat death ambience, field recordings and dark dreamlike dronefolk evokes images of pagan rites held in the shadows of a modern European city in the dead of night. It's probably my favorite project from the Beast Of Prey catalog, and both this and the HITWA discs from the label are primo listening for fans of eerie, crepuscular soundscapery.

Roughly translated from the Polish for "Urban Legend", Legendy Miejskie focuses heavily on field recordings that were captured in the town of Jaworzno where Atum is based. From what I can tell, the intention was to peel back the skin of urbanization from this town and reveal a hidden world of wildness and shadow, and it does so effectively, creating a tapestry of occult sounds where ritual music drifts through minimal nocturnal ambience, giving the sounds of night over Jaworzno an almost tactile quality.

Opener "Legendy Miejskie I" begins softly with the sound of crickets and other night life and wind rustling through trees, and later we hear footsteps crunching through undergrowth as eerie low drones settle in, a wave of minimal Lustmordian creepiness drifting over the mix of layered field recordings and distant metallic thrum. An eerie harpsichord-like melody floats across the horizon, the sound rising and falling, bits of eerie melody emerging for a few moments and then crawling back into the shadows. All of these sounds gradually re-enter and pile on until it becomes a wall of sound in the final minutes of the song, a towering malevolent dronescape swirling with soft whorls of distortion, distant metal clanking, and legions of chanting voices. This gets more dissonant, more nightmarish as it builds towards the end, then fades back into the sounds of night life.

The following four tracks are similar, beginning with more random rustling noises, echoing metallic sounds and the swarming chirp of crickets, then takes a turn into a darker, more malevolent direction as dissonant metal creaks and groans materialize over a swell of subterranean black drift, the twilight quiet disturbed by the scrape of graveyard gates swinging slowly on rusted hinges, ghostly moaning keening fading into the night, and the sound of water trickling across rock. The mysterious soundscapes expand into distant barking howling dogs, rainfall, and pounding tribal percussion, and "IV" has some of the stringed instrument elements that stood out on Atum's HITWA disc. Processed electronic hiss swirls like the steady soft murmur of rain; out of this emerges an acoustic guitar playing a sad, mournful chord progression, backed by minimal synth, dark and doleful sorrowful folk melody, ends suddenly with the clanking and slamming of metal reverberating through vast corridors, immense chains being dragged through gears, and distant rumbling machinery. Very creepy. At the end, the music moves into a vast bleak soundscape of constant tectonic rumblings and grinding low end with scrapes and crackling sounds occuring in the foreground, then transforms into the sound of water crashing and churning around wheezing instruments, flutes, whistles, harmonica, a haunting cloud of freeform dronefolk.

Comes in digipack packaging.