����� A reissue of this immense metallic drone album that was originally only available as a digital release through Flingco, Cristal's Homegoing brings us an expansive, nearly fifty-minute experience that moves through slowly shifting fields of thunderous, often crushing sound. The Richmond, VA trio notbly features Robert Donne of iconic math rockers Breadwinner and post-rock faves Labradford; while there's some surface similarities, the nine rumbling, darkened driftscapes featured here are far bleaker and heavier than the sort of stuff his latter band is known for. The group crafts vast, monochromatic sprawls of low-end thrum and intoxicating metallic drone, the latter sometimes resembling some huge sitar-like instrument emanating a thick, shimmering buzz in some dank subterranean chamber, with clouds of billowing cello billowing out towards their black horizons, tapping into an almost gothic, kosmische vibe on tracks like opener "Yolk".

����� The presence of the cello and the density of these compositions gives parts of this something of an orchestral feel, but one that has been stretched and melted across vast expanses of space, the notes bleeding and washing into one another, forming a monolithic wave of sound, Murky, muffled rhythms throb mindlessly in the depths of the mix, moving hypnotically through these clouds of dense metallic shimmer and rumbling bass. The breathlike gusts of sound issued throughout "Herrevad" resemble chanting voices that have been stretched and flattened and transformed in blurred smears of choral drone, echoing over the steady electrified hum; it leads the album into a more ritualistic, sacred atmosphere, later developing into stunning, cinematic ambient epics, that lush oceanic roar flecked with what sounds like doleful harmonica and swirling looping fragments of melody. And in the album's final stretch of corroded ambience, it moves from the ultra-minimal, virtually silent track "-" to the distorted roar of "12:12", as sinister pulses and fractured electronics echo over deep machinelike reverberations, revealing a series of ghostlike murmurs laid out over more expanses of ultra-bleak ambience. And at the very end, Cristal close this with the most immense track on the whole album, unfolding into the blasted industrial wasteland of "Preiure (Pan-American Remix)", where the group is joined by Donne's Labradford bandmate Mark Nelson, who transforms the music into a gorgeous rusted-out dronefield laced with clusters of gleaming melodious notes and bursts of clotted, blighted distortion. That finale is pretty breathtaking, a perfect close to this beautifully solemn album, and highly recommended if you're into the likes of Lull or Deathprod, or the heavier Troum material, or Locrian's earlier kosmische descents.