��Another solo release from the increasingly prolific Terence Hannum of acclaimed kosmische drone/metal outfit Locrian, and one of two recent cassette tape / newspaper sets that he released on the Washington DC label Accidental Guest in the past year, both of which we're finally getting in stock here at C-Blast. The twenty minute Dread Majesty is quite different from the monochrome synth meditations found on Hannum's other tape for Accidental Guest In The Sign, and these two tracks feature a much more melodic sound, starting with the primitive synth of "The Idea Of The Sacred", a simple catchy melody repeating over and over, a circular mantra that shifts in tone and texture for the first few minutes until it's finally joined by gusts of murky kosmische keyboard. When the track finally unfolds into it's full shimmering, coruscating glory, it starts to resemble some vintage early 70's space music experiment, a sound that you hear a lot of with Hannum's main band Locrian, but which gets deconstructed here into something less polished, grittier, a blast of haunting abstract low-fi spacedrift bathed in static and distortion that eventually begins to dissolve into a swirling fog of ghostly choral moans, squealing noise and wavering keys towards the end. A blistering rush of gorgeous, grimy electronics.
�� "Up To The Threshold", on the other hand, resembles some of the later Prurient material, a mixture of abrasive power electronics and dark, kosmische-tinged melody, an eerie melodic figure slowly whirling through clouds of caustic glitch and rumbling low-end drone, the repetition creating a moodier, more morose atmosphere that spreads like a dark blemish across the entire side of the tape, finally blooming into screeching, howling nightmarishness at the end, as violent swells of squalling guitar noise and feedback and effects threatening to obliterate Hannum's mesmeric melody.
�� As with the other tape release on Accidental Guest, Dread Majesty includes a full-color newsprint-style publication that features sixteen pages of art and text from Hannum, mostly focused on his bizarre, otherworldly collages of human hair and desolate, inhospitable landscapes; when perused while listening to the increasingly grim sounds captured on the tape, the overall feel of this stuff is pretty creepy, like deconstructed images from a Japanese horror film. Limited to one hundred copies.