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CEDARS OF LEBANON, THE  Archive II  CASSETTE   (Land Of Decay)   7.98


Gorgeous, luminous ghostdrones and nocturnal electronica emerge from this obscure Chicago group. Though it came out a while back, we're only now listing this older, professionally pressed cassette that came out on the now defunct Land Of Decay imprint run by the guys from Locrian. Delivering psychedelic post-industrial music enshrouded in darkness and mystery, this band was made up of former members of Minsk and Planes Mistaken For Stars (as well as current members of Chicago-area noise rockers The Swan King), delivering a lengthy collection of surreal dronescapes and acid-burnt ambience recorded in decommissioned missile silos and drainage tunnels.

Using numerous additional collaborators, the trio crafts haunting, minimal guitar trances overlaid with echoing female vocals and distant, booming eruptions, long drawn-out sprawls of smoldering noise and chugging, locomotive rumblings, laced with strange environmental sounds and swells of creepy kosmische drift, occasionally rumbling with the distant din of pounding sheet-metal rhythms and shambolic tribal drums. All of these densely layered soundscapes are peppered with similar rhythmic elements, mostly buried down in the mix, and choir-like voices also frequently seep to the surface, stretched and smeared across the length of several of these tracks. The result is pretty hallucinatory, conjuring a similar mood as some of the more abstract Teutonic outfits of the 70s alongside their sound collage techniques. Cedars lay the delay on pretty thick, transforming those choral voices into something resembling a Catholic Mass drowning in LSD, and at other points it can sound like some terrifying tape manipulation of a Penderecki piece. All pretty creepy, akin to Coil at their most menacing, and there's a barely recognizable cover of Bauhaus's "Nerves" that transforms the post-punk classic into a weirdly shambling death-folk ritual that sounds like it was recorded in some dank subterranean tunnel system, billowing out across nearly fifteen minutes of the tape.

Limited to one hundred twenty-five copies.