The Human Quena Orchestra - The Politics Of The Irredeemable

Crucial Blast, 2009

Superheavy brutal drone/noise of the pseudo-doom electronics + feedback variety (think more Goslings/Nadja/Burmese than pro-bono doom-drone acts). Kind of sounds like Alan Dubin (Khanate) performing over Ax or freakout-mode oldschool Skullflower on Tibetan quaaludes. Serious overtone magic going on here.

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Popol Vuh - Letze Tage - Letze Nächte

United Artists, 1976

I had originally thought the good Popol Vuh discography ended with what I had explored: Affenstunde, In Den Gärten Pharaos, Hosianna Mantra, Einsjäger & Siebejäger, Aguirre, and the Nosferatu soundtrack. Little did I know there were a couple of other gems interspersed there, Das Hoheleid Salamos, their "non-official" album of Indian Classical music appropriately titled Yoga, and this. Definitely one of their essential albums, really part of their peak material while they were still working with Djong Yun and creating spiritual, orchestral, pastoral rock music. Letze Tage - Letze Nächte is heavier on the sheer rock vibe, the sound here is closer to their soundtrack to Fitzcarraldo, the usual spiritual raga/modal ascents and descents molded into epic sturm & drang. Uplifting and energizing.

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Hypnagogic Video Zone

Prepare for STRANGE VIBES and CRAZY WAVES

MATRIX METALS "FLAMINGO BREEZE, PART 4" from OESB // FUTURE SOUND on Vimeo.

GRIPPERS NOTHER ONESERS ------- (AT SLIMER BEACH) from OESB // FUTURE SOUND on Vimeo.

A Portrait Of Eliane Radigue

A Portrait of Eliane Radigue (2009) from Maxime Guitton on Vimeo.

via Root Blog

Arcana Coelestia - Le Mirage De L'Idéal

ATMF, 2009

Melodic doom metal is not a genre that has ever bespoke of good taste to me, so I approach the sound of an album like this with a fair bit of trepidation, a blackened funeral doom (or more precisely doom'd black metal) from the distinctly Italian strain of underground black metal, which from my exposure (to Absentia Lunae and Melancolia Estatica) takes a wee bit of a "gothic and melodic metal can be ok" attitude. However this album doesn't veer over the edge into what I consider cheesy about these genres, the closest it gets is with some clean sung vocals, which as they turn out are not totally unnecessary and at least don't get in the way. The same kind of psychedelic cavernous reverb that soaks the best work of Elysian Blaze, seemingly inspired by Lycia, is found here. What helps matters even further is that the band certainly takes its influences from the right places, strains of symbolist and decadent art, writing, and mysticism from the late 19th century. The band itself is named after a text (meaning, vaguely, Celestial Secrets) of Christian mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg, but more specifically the name is inspired by bleak Swedish poet August Strindberg's tormented visions related to the work in works like his Inferno. Beyond this, the cover art is of Leda & the Swan from what I am almost positive is a Gustave Moreau (by far one of my favorite artists ever) painting, and the band has submitted other symbolist works as band images. Eerily holy and temptestuous music of the internal life.

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Alethes - Aletheia

Glass Throat, 2006

I had heard this album a year back and couldn't get into, probably because of what seemed at the time like unapproachable mopey lyrics, turns out that's a small stumbling block because as this album progresses it gets much better than I remember, with great string accompaniment, songs bookended by quality dark ambience, and everything driven along the fogged and drenched Cascadian forest hills by Markus Wolff's (Waldteufel) peak percussion. An excellent album of dark pagan folk from the consistently great Glass Throat Recordings.

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Jacaszek - Treny

Miasmah, 2008

Another addition to the list of successful, beautiful electro-acoustic approaches to the Divine that I have come to love at my core, with no genre-investigating strings attached, along with Xela's The Divine and Akira Rabelais' seminal Spellewauerynsherde. Baroque chamber surrealism, the sound is somewhat like a less splintered Fjordne if he had just lost a loved one, or a version of Miasmah labelmates Elegi with microbeats and Hildegard Von Bingen chorales over it. After the second track I was sold, I consider this one of the most beautiful albums of the past couple years, and cannot wait to hear his experiment in field recording of Gothic cathedrals in 2009's Pentral.

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p.s. wondering what the word Treny meant in Polish, a quick wiki brought up that the term means Laments, they were threnodies (verses of mourning), written to a lost daughter by renaissance poet, Jan Kochanowski (essentially the Polish Shakespeare):

Lament 1

All Heraclitus' tears, all threnodies
And plaintive dirges of Simonides,
All keens and slow airs in the world, all griefs,
Wrung hands, wet eyes, laments and epitaphs,
All, all assemble, come from every quarter,
Help me to mourn my small girl, my dear daughter,
Whom cruel Death tore up with such wild force
Out of my life, it left me no recourse.
So the snake, when he finds a hidden nest
Of fledgling nightingales, rears and strikes fast
Repeatedly, while the poor mother bird
Tries to distract him with a fierce, absurd
Fluttering — but in vain! the venomous tongue
Darts, and she must retreat on ruffled wing.
"You weep in vain," my friends will say. But then,
What is not in vain, by God, in lives of men?
All is in vain! We play at blindman's buff
Until hard edges break into our path.
Man's life is error. Where, then, is relief?
In shedding tears or wrestling down my grief?

Min Kniv - Av Aske

Fossbrenna Creations, 2007

Short tape of True Nidarosian Black Metal (that's from Trondheim for those out of the know) that is as much atmospheric as it is raw, straightforward and uncompromising in the vein of Bone Awl/ Furdidurke. Specifically reminds of raw+atmospheric pros such as Arizmenda, Belketre or peak Darkthrone. Only a bit more primitive. Small'un but a good'un.

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