��� Since surfacing sometime around 2010 with his debut album Beyond The Secret Flame, Colombian artist Edgar Kerval has kicked off a prolific release schedule that has produced at least five full length albums (a few of which appeared on renowned industrial label Cold Spring), as well as a number of cassette releases, while surprisingly maintaining a fairly consistent level of quality throughout. One thing you can count on with Kerval's dark ritual ambience is a richly layered listening experience that blankets the listener in coldvoid ambience, dark and dolorous and steeped in a classic kosmische sound that recalls the occult synth-visions of Endvra and Herbst9 while also shuddering with occasional moments of demonic intoxication that can almost rival some of Funerary Call's stuff. Can't recommend his stuff enough if you're into the more ritualistic end of dark ambient music, and on Hau-Hra (his first release for Noctivagant), Kerval pairs up some of that Emme Ya material with the sole recorded output of his Nuit alter-ego, all of which make for some sumptuous subterranean psychedelia.

��� On previous releases, Kerval has frequently used elements of Middle Eastern music in his compositions, but for his half of this album, those influences and sounds are predominant. The three tracks from Emme Ya sprawl out for well over half an hour, blending tribal drumming and percussive rattling with distant horns that slowly twist through the night sky like plumes of fragrant wood-smoke, the sounds of nocturnal life surrounding his sinister blackened driftscapes. Hissed invocations and group chanting drifts through clouds of echo, ophidian prayers rising alongside strains of ghostly woodwinds and swells of John Carpenter-esque synthesizer figures, sometimes rattled by the sound of tinny drum machines. A darkly narcotic and cinematic sound that travels through early 21st century Moroccan markets and passages beneath the temples of Egyptian devil-cults.

��� Hadn't heard anything from Kerval's other project Nuit before this, and was a little surprised by the surreal, almost Lynchian atmosphere that exudes from these tracks. Could be the weird chanting munchkins that lurk throughout these three tracks, but I just cant shake the strange Black Lodge vibe that I got off this. Definitely stranger stuff than the blackened ritual ambience of Emme Ya, that's for sure. That weird high-pitched spoken word delivery appears over a swirling fog of terrifying orchestral drift and odd, fractured electronic rhythms, mixed in with surges of sinister kosmische synth and vast reverberant drift. Lovely female vocals drift alongside strange, almost liturgical chanting, underscored by eerie chamber strings and bits of classical piano. A primitive drum machine plods throughout the tracks, slow shuffling rhythms buried down in the mix, giving some of this a whiff of early Coil. Quite creepy.

��� Like some of the other Noctivagant releases, this disc comes in a six-panel gatefold sleeve, and is limited to four hundred twenty-three hand-numbered copies.