Aun – Fiat Lux Label: Cyclic Law – 76th Cycle, La Esencia – LER013/2015 Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Limited Edition, Black with white/blue splatter Country: Canada Released: 2015 Style: Dark Ambient, Drone, Experimental
AUN’s music as always suggested forays into other dimensions, be it to imaginary worlds, industrial wastelands, through space and time, or via mind altered states. From the ominous dystopian artwork, of a city being drained of its energy by some mysterious black hole, to the first notes of the title track “Fiat Lux” we are once again transported on AUN’s otherworldly travelling path. Ever since the space industrial and power electronics of AUN’s previous Cyclic Law cult release “Black Pyramid”, the world has become even more sinister, but in contrast, “Fiat Lux” exudes even more of AUN’s melancholic hopefulness. The disintegrating chords and densely textured waves, anchored by a left field industrial pulse, invoke occult drug enhanced, future psychedelia. Created in part in their Montreal studio, these tracks were extensively performed live, prior to recording, and refined while on tour breaks in Montpellier, Barcelona and Tokyo. The energy of these cities is definitely at work in these recordings, which also features a French connection of experimental heavy hitters: Witxes, Frédéric D. Oberland and Philippe Petit have helped round out Dumais and Leblanc’ arsenal. FIAT LUX: Let there be light, from light will come darkness.
The Joy Of Nature – The Empty Circle, Part I: Swirling Lands Of Disquiet And Catharsis Label: Ahnstern – Ahnstern31 Format: CD Country: Austria Released: May 2008 Style: Dark Ambient, Acoustic, Experimental
The Joy of Nature is a multimedia project from the Azores, with music as its main focus. Musically, “The Joy of Nature” is like a serpent always renewing itself – never resting in one shape, changing the form but keeping the same essence. “Swirling Lands of Disquiet and Catharsis” is the first part of a trilogy entitled “The Empty Circle”. Each part of the trilogy has a correspondence with the three main hermetic-alchemical phases: Nigredo, Albedo and Rubedo and, at the same time and correspondingly, to individual experience, inheritance of our ancestors and, finally, the overcoming of a mere individual state of existence. This first part corresponds to Nigredo. The subtitle of this work – “A Theatre lost in The Vast Abyss of Starry Skies” came in a lucid dream in which appeared the idea that this world in which we live our day-to-day lives can be compared to a small theatre in a vast abyss of starry skies. This album is about a world of disquiet, in which a catharsis should be done. To gather the impurities, realize their nature and build something pure from there.
There are elements of Folk, Ambient, Psychedelic and Experimental music, mixed in a coherent way, creating a unique sound and a breathtaking atmosphere, predominantly acoustic and with dark tones.
Traclist: 1 A Theatre Lost In The Vast Abyss Of Starry Skies, Pt. I 8:08 2 The Womb, Pt. I 4:43 3 And Then The Clock Appeared 3:54 4 O Cíclico Retorno De Lobos E Ferreiros 5:06 5 Nemesis’s Factory Of Nightmares Beyond The Curtain 9:55 6 The Dew From Erased Days 3:49 7 In The Kingdom Of The Blind 3:40 8 Absinthe, Tea And The Memory Of Autumn Leaves Falling 4:33 9 Dissolving Memories Into Grey Skies 3:52 10 Invocando A Nobreza Para Desmanchar Feiticos 3:44 11 The Womb, Pt. II 4:58 12 A Theatre Lost In The Vast Abyss Of Starry Skies, Pt. II 5:28
Zu – Jhator Label: House of Mythology – HOM 009 Format: CD, Album Country: UK Released: 07 Apr 2017 Style: Free Jazz, Noise, Prog Rock
Stubbornly free from genre classification, Italian trio Zu have been proud to follow their own musical pathways for some twenty years now. Throughout their highly diverse career the band has cultivated the art of collaboration, joining forces with luminaries such as Mike Patton, Damo Suzuki, Mats Gustafsson and Nobukazu Takemura. Their new album – and first on House of Mythology – is no exception, featuring guest musicians such as Jessica Moss of Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and Kristoffer Lo of Norwegian pop sensations Highasakite, among others.
Jhator is perhaps their most ethereal venture yet, and a bold new trajectory for musicians and label alike – a pensive, mind-expanding foray into abstraction and wonder, rich in cinematic ambience and transcendent, transformational power. Consisting of two extended pieces, this is a work that connects Zu to their antecedents both spiritual and musical, whilst forging forward in the manner of no-one but themselves.
The album takes its starting point inspiration-wise from an ancient Tibetan funeral practice, the sky burial. With this in mind, the two lengthy tracks herein chronicle a journey from the earthly to the sacred realm. The band themselves clarify their position thus: “In making this album we have tried to affirm life, beauty and mystery. We refocus the vision in another direction, far from the Western point of view.” True to this approach, this album’s journey is a psychotropic mission through trance states and transcendence, with the soul taking flight in the sweeping soundscapes and otherworldly ambience evoked by this unique act.
It is certainly possible to hear the echoes of Coil in the sonic experimentation and transgressive approach of these two pieces; the band have also taken to heart some of the central precepts of one of that outfit’s creative minds, Peter Christopherson, which runs thus: “As long as I can remember, I’ve approached music from a visual point of view. Any technique that you can apply to a film, you can also apply to a piece of music.” Moreover, some of these slips into the ether could be compared to the fanciful flights of expression that Pink Floyd undertook around their epiphanies at Pompeii, but this is perhaps more to do with the general aura and panoramic reveries that occurred visually in tandem with the ’71 concert-film.
Above and beyond any creative footing found in a rock music lineage, this is also an album inspired by the ancient Egyptian texts discussed in Susan Brind Morrow’s The Dawning Moon of the Mind and the Sufi poetry of Farid ud-Din Attar. On Jhator Zu traverse beyond everyday concerns to reflect a broader existential life that unites the primal and the metaphysical, relaying a series of vivid audial atmospheres with immense scope and luminous intensity. There may be few bands we’d trust with such matter of life and death, but on the evidence of this record Zu stand beyond compare, a visionary force whose horizons seem ever-expanding.
