When The Moon Is In Her Second Quarter – When The Moon Is In Her Second Quarter Label: Status Prod. – SP 09 CD Format: CD, Album, Limited Edition, Numbered Country: Russia Released: 10 Nov 2018 Style: Industrial, Dark Ambient, Experimental, Drone, Noise
The deaf darkness of the chthonic forest gives birth to hitherto unseen monsters and their moans, like dead leaves, are carried by the wind between the skeletons of trees, as ancient as the Earth itself. Lost souls sigh, wheeze,howl, revealing their essence , when the Moon is in her second quarter… Status Prod. presents new CD – album of the anonymous ritual ambient / death industrial project When the Moon is in her second quarter “Like dead leaves”. Two nameless hymns–rituals are dedicated to the memory of Yevgeniy Yufit, the founder of the genre Necrorealism in cinema, painting and literature. The record features guest appearance of Ord Err (ORD). The album was released in 200 hand-numbered copies, and is a pennant made of brown designer cardboard with PAINT-IT-BLACK DESIGN, applied by silk-screen printing on it, in silver color.
Kinit Her – The Poet & The Blue Flower (Vinyl, LP) Label: Avant! – AV!025 Format: Vinyl, LP, Limited Edition, Grey Country: Italy Released: 15 Jul 2013 Style: Experimental, Neofolk, Industrial
Through kaleidoscopic composition, constitution of voice, and timbral experimentation, Nathaniel Ritter and Troy Schafer continue to braid their string of works as Kinit Her. Their discography has grown strong over recent years with releases on such esteemed labels as Alt.Vinyl, Small Doses, Pesanta Urfolk, Reue um Reue, and now, AVANT!; this repertoire has become a powerful force that is harmoniously reliable and unpredictable in theme, atmosphere, and trajectory. On The Poet & the Blue Flower, Schafer and Ritter endure in architecting a unique system of auditory mysticism. Falling in an undefinable territory of the post-industrial and neofolk landscapes with both strictly structured song-like fragments and more free-associative passages throughout its 8 tracks, this album features the exalted rhetoric that is Schafer’s stoic orchestral arrangements, Ritter’s tidal electronics and the continually evolving vocal deliveries of both men.
Lyrically, The Poet & the Blue Flower continues with Kinit Her’s recent bent of drawing on poetry from Germany’s early 20th Century post-romantic literary underground. With this record, they drift slightly from Der Kosmikerkreis to the poems of literary and political philosopher Rudolf Pannwitz serving as their sole inspiration. Pannwitz’ poetry effortlessly escalates Kinit Her’s themes of the entanglement of Heaven, Earth, and those who believe to be dwelling in some intersection thereof. Visual accompaniment to Kinit Her’s music, as it was on the recent The Cavern Stanzas, has been graciously provided by the brush of Gianluca Martucci. Mastering courtesy of James Plotkin.
Arche-Fossil (Cønjuntø Vacíø, 2020) is Wind Atlas’ fourth record, which sees the band pushing the boundaries of their own music as genres such as post-industrial electronics, ambient, noise and popular mediterranean music merge, bringing to life a hybrid and intense album.
The gestation process of Arche-Fossil began even before the publication of An Edible Body (2018). With that record, the band changed members and ventured into more electronic territories by using drum machines and synths that still fit their ritual post-punk sound. After two years spent working on this new record, these electronic landscapes have taken over their music.
Arche-Fossil was almost entirely recorded by themselves at their home studio and finished at Maik Mayer’s recording studio with Sergio Pérez. It collects the songs that represent the band’s work over the last two years and that best reflect the issues that weave the whole record regarding the relationship between human beings and reality. Is it possible to know an uninterpretable reality? What is knowing? How does the relationship between human beings and reality work? These questions inform a series of songs that produce a voice that continuously muses on what it perceives and the ways in which it does.
Hunger opens the record amidst a thunder of abstract sounds and a viscous bass loop. By using samples from M. E. S. H.’s “Optimate”, which forms the noisy basis of the song, Hunger approaches more experimental electronic terrains. This song revolves not only around an insatiable and uninhibited hunger for finding new ways of saying and being in the world, but also around an enormous emptiness.
The monumental track Where Nothing Happens explores empty spaces and everything that happens within them when something–a step, a voice, an object–interrupts their eternal being, thus generating new meanings between these spaces and that which suddenly inhabits them.
In Dos Ojos, the band continues navigating electronic landscapes, this time through Spanish traditional and oral literature. They follow this path further in Esta Despedida, where the vocals use one single sentence to unsay: “Todos los nombres van a morir a ti.” (“You are where all names go to die”) From then onwards, the vocals employ a form of glossolalia as a tool to continue uttering after the death of meaning that they have previously announced. Likewise, Days of Sadness, a free adaptation of Galician poet José Ángel Valente’s poem “Latitud”, pays homage to the language of the unsaid, which has heavily influenced Wind Atlas’ discourse over the years.
That Mouth emerges as a dramatic effect when the record has managed to hypnotize us. Trance and an industrial sound meet amidst MS20 roars and a beat going over 140bpm. Metallic blows and the sound of chains burst in, creating rhythmic patterns over a bass drum that pushes forward.
The eeriest and most beautiful moments appear on the record’s B-side. Such moments come to life in tracks like Oceanic Sexuality or the closer Do You Have a House?, along with the experimental Nada, in which, by only utilizing noise, Wind Atlas create a sonic collage poem that draws from power-electronics. Here, some of the band’s recurring themes reemerge: emptiness, water, and the body.
In Arche-Fossil, Wind Atlas continue exploring some of the paths they began mapping with their previous record. This time, however, they manage to approach the heterogeneous in a much more certain and lucid manner, without ever stopping wondering about their own voice.
Andrea P. Latorre: vocals Sergi Algiz: electronics and guitar Raúl Q. de Orte: Synths Raul Pérez: drums
Recorded by the band and final recordings at Maik Maier Studios (Barcelona) by Sergio Pérez. Mixed by Sergio Pérez and mastered by Stephen Quinn at Analogue Heart (UK). Art photos by Àlex Sardà. Artwork by David M. Romero.
