Able to easily shift creative gears between a cold, vaguely punk-infected form of doom-laden black metal and works of immersive electronic grandeur, the Russian one-man band Frozen Ocean shot onto my radar recently with Likegyldig Raseri, a killer but widely overlooked disc of ratty, monochromatic black metal that was one of the final releases on the Suffering Jesus imprint. Released roughly around the same time, Oneiric finds Frozen Ocean working in a vastly different style, offering six tracks of sumptuous, ominous industrial ambience and bleak kosimische synthscapes. Presented with some great evocative artwork from Cold Graves, Oneiric is the kind of top-notch hellbound space music that I'm an avowed junkie for; these rumbling dronescapes are littered with faint, broken-down mechanical rhythms, swirling clouds of gleaming synthesizer and minimal, celestial keys that make for entrancing listening and channel a similar kind of bleak, apocalyptic feel as the "cold void" electronics of Neptune Towers, Tellurian Fields and Saturn Form Essence. Like those projects, this owes a huge debt to the most desolate-sounding recordings of Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, but there's also an murky industrial element to Frozen Ocean's sprawling compositions that I hear in the deep clanking Mz.412-esque rhythms, time-stretched percussion, looping whirr and hum, and icy metallic drones that are laced throughout each track; what this stuff really reminds me of is the dark drone-music of Maeror Tri/Troum, especially when it drifts off into the mysterious, minimal looping abysses of "Levitation". This project goes much darker though, with music that is filled with visions of black nebula and dying star giants, crumbling alien civilizations and yawning wormholes that form out of growling black synths and vast orchestral drones, with moments of sublime cinematic dread emerging on tracks like "Quiver In The Voidrift" and the almost Mortiis-esque symphonic turn on "Brooks Run To The Comet Lake". Another excellent album of grim space/abyss music from the Black Metal fringes.

Released in a limited edition of five hundred copies.