Finally got this in stock; it's been out for over a year now but most folks seem to still be unaware of this bizarre, enthralling album of pitch-black prog. I'm surprised that this VA/NC-based trio hasn't garnered more attention from the avant-metal crowd, as the lineup features Tannon Penland from Loincloth / Breadwinner / Honor Role working alongside fellow Loincloth member and experimental drone/ambient artist Craig Hilton (who has previously collaborated with Maurizio Bianchi on the PU 94 album) and avant-electronics sculptor Tomas Phillips.

The strange, otherworldly sounds that these guys create with Gauchiste is pretty far removed from the complex math metal of Loincloth, though. The album opens with a killer black ambient introduction that has sheets of sustained tones hovering ominously in a lightless void, the sound shifting into ever more evil sounding forms as the drones waver like orchestral strings; after awhile you start to hear far-off, fading blastbeats and bits of gnarled bass-riffery that briefly surface in the mix, and this abstract improvisational death-drift goes on for awhile, the instruments dropping in and out of sight, the drones turning black and malevolent, like some strange mixture of Arvo Part and chopped-up, deconstructed fragments of math metal heaviness. When the second track comes in with a crash of percussion and more distant dread-filled sounds emerging towards the foreground, what sounds like someone praying in Latin appears alongside far-off howling winds, followed by vast swells of shimmering dark electronic textures and strange, inhuman utterances lurking deep in the mix. Those vocals become more prominent as the album progresses, emerging as blackened goblin shrieks and guttural distorted snarling that rises over the pitch-black orchestral ambience and instrumental noise. And a myriad of strange effects are laced throughout the sound, often just barely perceptible to the listener, revealing a teeming black world of aural decay beneath the surface. The first couple of tracks are all almost Lustmordian in their lightless ambience, but the later tracks feature more of the heavy instrumentation; stretched-out metallic guitar drones begin to drift in, morphing into glacial guitar solos that have been stretched and processed into icy alien melodies. Then it suddenly drops into a kind of deformed blackened doom metal on the song "Choeur II", the drums so washed out and muted that they sound like a distant waterfall, the guitars equally distant and low-fi, while in the foreground of the mix you hear strange footsteps, scratching sounds, rattling, bits of backwards sound,

the sound of heavy double-bass rhythms suddenly dropping in and out of the mix. Its on the last few tracks that the drums finally seem to take full form as swells of intense shimmering cymbals and controlled blasts of bass-drum pummel, but even then, it's still super abstract and creepy. By the time you get to the final track, the band shifts back into the black ambience, malevolent electronic drones drifting over booming processed percussive blasts, the sound swelling in volume and intensity to terrifying effect amid swirling waves of that awesome orchestral black drift and those unsettling atonal sounds, building inexorably towards a fearsome industrialized climax.

This album really blew me away with its unique amalgam of avant-garde metal and dark experimental soundscaping. It's sort of comparable to Sunn at their most abstract, but crossed with the evil prog of Heresie-era Univers Zero and the abstract sound experiments and nightmarish dream-states of Nurse With Wound - anyone into the abstract metal-tinged works of bands like KTL, Detritivore, Fermentae, Runhild Gammelsaeter's Amplicon album, Agnus Dei, and Maniac's various collaborations with NWW's Andrew Liles would no doubt love Gauchiste's debut. Can't wait to hear more from them...

Released on both Cd and vinyl (each limited to a mere one hundred fifty copies), we've got both in stock: the Cd comes in a cool-looking tin case with a see-through plastic cover, the album's liner notes readable through the clear disc tray, and the Lp features alternative artwork in a multi-panel jacket.