Phaenon's first album Submerged was a solid debut from the Maryland-based dark ambient artist, combining the obvious Lustmordian influences with the vast minimal roar of interstellar static, hinting at a kind of cosmic black ambience largely devoid of dramatic synth moves. But on his follow-up album His Master's Voice, Szymon Tankiewicz's Phaenon evolves into even more desolate soundscapery, blending some very subtle cinematic electronics with expansive fields of emptiness and stray radio signals drifting infinitely through the great black void. The album combines the direct influence of Stanislaw Lem's philosophical science fiction novel His Master's Voice (direct quotes from the book appear throughout the packaging) and its story of human scientists attempting to decipher transmissions from an alien intelligence from across the vastness of space (and the myriad of ethical debates that follow) are tied in to the amazing and haunting artwork from Eric Lacombe and the massive black-hole soundscapes that drift out of Phaenon's abyss. These elements come together perfectly for what is one of the eeriest albums of abyssal electronics that I've heard since the last Inade full-length. I'm pretty sure that fans of that German black ambient artist are going to resonate with Phaeonon's music on a similar level, as these slowly swirling soundscapes have a similar sonic DNA: slow, wafting clouds of metallic whirr and shapeless clusters of synth-drone, distant surges of ominous low-end reverberations, stretches of doom-laden black drift, streaks of kosmische synth that burns white-hot scars across an ancient starless void, ghostly electronic howls that materialize way out on the periphery of perception, synthetic horn-like blasts drifting through space, metallic drones glinting in the blackness, all part of these densely layered soundscapes that billow out in an orchestral mass of blackened sound. It is often harrowing listening, the sounds coming together into moments of perfect aural dread that eventually climaxes with a stunning final act of deep-space synthdrift and isolationist thrum.

Comes in a striking digipack presentation.