���Fans of dark, heavy avant-guitar ambience in particular will perk up at this fantastic collaboration, featuring Stephen O'Malley (Sunn / Khanate / KTL / Burning Witch), Oren Ambarchi (notable for his many solo works of experimental guitar/electronics as well as performing with Sunn offshoot projects Burial Chamber Trio, Pentemple and Gravetemple) and famed avant-rock producer Randall Dunn (Master Musicians Of Bukkake). The trio came together to create a score for the short science fiction art film Kairos from Belgian filmmaker Alexis Destoop, which I have yet to see myself' from the sounds created for the score alone, it's definitely spurred my interest in the work. The music captured here on this deluxe double LP (out recently from Drag City) is such a sumptuous slab of dark hypno-rock delirium that it can sit perfectly well on it's own, though, and it's one of the best things I've heard from O'Malley and Ambarchi in quite awhile.

��� The trio utilize an array of electric and acoustic guitars, vibraphone, bass, drums, Mellotron and synthesizers as well as some more exotic instrumentations such as a shruti box and crotales (a kind of miniature tuned cymbal played with mallets), but as soon as the flurry of ghostly glitchery and warbling electronic tones begin to materialize across the opening minutes of Shade Themes, the group introduces the wash of sound that becomes the core of the album, rendering most of the instruments unidentifiable within their rich layered sonic fog. As "That Space Between" slowly begins to coalesce around the sounds of softly strummed minor key chords and a shuffling, slightly jazzy drumbeat, the music gradually shifts into a surreal sort of post-rock, luminous guitar notes rising and hovering and decaying over a slow, ominous melody, bits of distorted detritus and droning feedback flitting through the mix. It's a crepuscular, Bohren-esque instrumental sprawl with lush layers of instrumental texture, the drumming in particular revealing a strange complexity in its seemingly haphazard rhythmic interplay, eventually turning the first side into something akin to the twangy dolorousness of Earth laid over a bed of narcotized tribal percussion, chest-rattling bass tones rising and falling across the track, a strange Lynchian atmosphere emerging from the soft vibraphone-like notes that drift hazily over the insistent rattling rhythm, later peeling back and revealing gleaming, vaguely Middle Eastern-esque melodies that float from out of some ancient Rhodes piano, breaking apart further into a kind of mysterious, gorgeous nocturnal psychedelia.

��� From there, the trio continue to creep further out into Shade Themes's twilight realm, moving from more of that sprawling, shadowy hypnotic post-rock and dreamy twanginess into the heavier, hazy "Temporal, Eponymous", that insistent, elliptical drumbeat pounding beneath distorted powerchords and waves of black amplifier drift and gleaming electronics, taking on a clanking, almost industrial-tinged quality, eventually unfolding into monstrous, fuzz-drenched psychedelic blues awash in waves of searing raga-like drone, slowly enfolded in plumes of kosmische synthesizer. Over on the third side, you get a couple of guest appearances; the first from comes from Tor Deitrichson of the cult 70s psych outfit Diga Rhythm Band, who plays tabla on the abstract creepscape "Circumstances Of Faith", an expanse of minimal bass throb and distant ghostly wailing, mysterious electronic sounds and swells of mesmeric metallic drone, enshrouded in a dark and ominous atmosphere that eventually explodes into a furious psychedelic squall of screaming effects-damaged acid guitar and pounding death-rite drumming. And the track that follows features Japanese psychedelic singer Ai Aso adrift on vast cetaceous drones and sheets of spectral hum, her etheric whisper lilting high over deep, tectonic booms and smears of gorgeous, bleary grey-sky ambience and swirls of hushed synthdrift, a combination that makes for one of the most stunning sequences on the album. And by the album's end, the trio ascend to a final symphony of crushing metallic drone, huge power chords shifting and thundering across the dusky expanse, eerie wailing falling across the horizon, a vast ocean of feedback and rumbling amplifier hum sprawling endlessly, gorgeous and grim, a crushing Sunn-style sea of doom-laden drones spreading out beneath Kairos's majestic, apocalyptic vistas.

��� A real winner on all fronts, this vinyl-only release also sports more of Denis Kostromitin's amazing artwork for the heavyweight case-wrapped gatefold jacket, as well as photography from Faith Coloccia (Mamiffer).