����� Much sought-after in it's original form, this is an earlier effort from the increasingly prolific Dan Barrett, who aside from running his excellent Enemies List imprint has been dropping all sorts of high-caliber gloom-tuneage recently like experimental blackened post-punk outfit Have A Nice Day and off-kilter darkwave project Black Wing. A lot of that stuff has been getting reissued by Flenser over the past year or two, and the latest such reissue is the debut effort from Barrett's solo project Giles Corey. Hadn't heard this particular band before this, but I'm hooked now, sucked into the weird alternate universe that he creates around this strange blend of experimental gloompop and low-fi downer-folk. And from a physical standpoint, this thing is impressive as hell. Where the original release was a CDR accompanied by a book, this compiles the music onto a pair of LPs in printed inner-sleeves and packages them with a perfect-bound reprint of the book in a gorgeous case-wrapped box with foam-molded interior.

����� Musically, this is yet another deeper departure from the avant-black metal sound that Flenser first established itself with. But it's still right up my alley. Taking its name from one of the more infamous victims of the Salem witch trials, Giles Corey sounds so much bigger than you'd expect from what is essentially a one-man band. Each of the nine songs offers a uniquely bleak and depressing experience, starting with the strange processional feel and ghostly clatter of "The Haunting Presence" that builds to a crescendo of wailing desperation before fragmenting into surreal, random noises, atonal piano, and traces of delicate, aching melody set atop a booming, wall-rattling kick drum. Then "Blackest Bile" drifts in with its wistful bedroom-folk guitar strum and layered vocal melodies, unfolding into a moody piece of low-fi gloompop. That stylistic shifting runs through the whole album, the songs sprawling into heart-wrenching melodies and hushed, funereal folkiness, traced with distant vocal harmonies and sinister spoken narratives, organ-like drones hovering in the fog above strange metallic noises and seemingly random jumbles of voice and sound. That mangled aural ectoplasm will sometimes slip into focus as a languid breakbeat appears and the music transforms into stunning trip-hop draped in cinematic synths, or unfurl bits of mournful country twang ("Spectral Bride") or grimy, reverb-drenched pop majesty ("No One Is Ever Going To Want Me"). Spooky but understated, these dilapidated gloompop pieces sometimes reveal traces of electronic voice phenomena that have been threaded through the spare, cavernous songs. Like each of his other projects, Barrett's work here is unique and heartfelt, draped in a morbid, self-deprecating vibe that's become part of his creative signature.

����� Worth it for the music alone, but Giles Corey becomes a more expansive experience with the book that comes with it. This perfect bound, one hundred forty page tome is presented as a kind of journal capturing the narrator's explorations into Electronic voice phenomenon, ruminations on existential despair and the search for oblivion, and a strange mythology involving a figure named Robert Voor and his research into spiritualism. It's a kind of experimental novel that mixes its narrative with artwork, hand-scrawled letters, lyrics, fractured text, and other elements give this a multi-layered, almost epistolary quality.