Syven – Aikaintaite

There are a number of ways people use to “get back to nature”. Some grab some camping gear and pitch a tent in the middle of a forest for a few days. Some strap on a back pack and hike amongst the indigenous flora and fauna. And some, well . . . some commune in the great outdoors by themselves or a very small group and strum the kantele and chant to the stars. The latter example may be a little on the extreme side of things or a overly simplistic explanation of what Syven are all about, but sometimes it’s best to dumb things down for the masses to make a subject more understandable. That’s not to say that the average Waverider needs anything simplified, but this writer kinda’ does. This is me with a shovel digging myself deeper. On to the record!

Syven’s Aikaintaite album is a grandiose, spectacular, epic journey into the backlands of one’s mind and all set to tribal thrum of primordial rhythms and chants. The music is anchored by the traditional Finnish string instrument called the kantele and supported by ambient waves of synths, thundering rhythms, the occasional electrical guitar, and all enhanced by a variety of vocalizations ranging from mournful wails, tribal chants, and guttural growls. Mix all of these wondrous sounds together and embrace a uniform sound as haunting as the wind howling through the trees of a forest and as serene as a crisp breeze across the surface of a mountain lake.

“Jaljet” is a mesmerizing, near twenty-minute journey into sonic exploration that mixes huge ambient swells complete with chirping birds and various sounds from woodland creatures, even a little trickling stream for good measure. The synths cast a drapery of weight over the entire landscape and the shamanistic vocals chants leave one feeling as if their witnessing the world come alive with the rising of the morning sun. The overall tone has a somber feel, but never depressive. More akin to realizing how inferior and mortal we are as a species in comparison to the grandness of Mother Nature. Around the four minute mark, the rhythms become a little heavier, the electric guitars a little louder, the guttural chants more ominous, and the plucking strings of the kantele more plaintive, ultimately, the music creates a vibe like the sound of the earth’s own heart pumping life into her subjects. Heady and intoxicating, the pulsating rhythms have a tribal intensity as if there’s a story within the tone of each drum beat. The dynamic breaks to this song keep it fresh and flowing, especially welcome is the serene sounds of the kantele between the crushing rhythms.

“Ne Jotka Selviavat Talvestamme” is another 18 minute-plus atmospheric sonic journey filled with dynamic breaks. Huge swells of vocals crooning and chants mixed with sheer walls of distorted guitars and the complex touches of the kantele. This stuff is truly amazing to get lost in. Like shifting desert sands, like windswept mountains, like the rolling ocean tides, like the cascading leaves of seasonal change, this music is in constant flux, yet rooted to the core themes, much like the sands and mountains and seas are rooted to the earth. Always challenging the listener to follow the musical path laid out in front of them, but simple enough to follow because the markers along said path are so clearly designated. It’s a beautiful song. A timeless song.

Aikaintaite is, in a word, gorgeous. The textures that Syven use to create the lush atmospheric passages is stuff of legend. Take patience in listening to this album, things don’t happen fast, but when that certain something hits you, it hiys you good and hard, and leaves a lasting impression. The album could easily fall into the New Age category because of its ambient and shamanistic chanting, and even the heavy guitar portions wouldn’t take away from that. The term bandied about these days is Neo-Folk and that seems to work as well as anything else. The album will appeal to you if you’re the type of person who likes ambient music, or if you like to get baked and walk through nature. In fact, next time I do a day hike or find myself in the mountains, I’ll probably spin this disc as I take a short breather. Then again, listening to nature’s own music is a soundtrack unto itself and I probably wouldn’t ruin that. Nonetheless, Aikaintaite is a brilliantly realized record and I’m thankful I took the time to listen to this one when it came across the promo wire.

Pope

http://koti.mbnet.fi/atolonen/syven/intro.html

Svarti Loghin - Drifting Through The Void

In one of my numerous daily conversations with my writing/business partner and the musical savant Racer X, I made mention that I was kinda’ digging this weird little niche of music that thankfully bears no title. As a description, I stated that it’s like a bunch of ambient black metallers were going through their parents record collections and deciding that they wanted to play 70’s style progressive and psychedelic rock . . . or maybe it’s vice versa. 70’s music lovers playing modern atmospheric black metal just seems like such a stretch, but hey . . . what the hell do I know? I just report what I hear! The last year or so, I’ve had some great experiences re-discovering, or self-discovering music that was originally released in the 70’s and early 80’s, and I’m finding that a lot of modern musicians are also going back to this era of music for inspiration. Year of the Goat, Hypnos 69, Been Obscene, Stone Axe, Opeth, Colour Haze . . . all are but a few of the bands that come to mind that look to the past for guidance towards the future.

So, I was going through my iPod and purging all of the stuff that I never listened to or I felt had no reason to be cluttering up my precious bits and bytes, and stumbled on a band called Svarti Loghin. I must have received this album as a digital download and it got lost in the pile of other digital submissions (always a major problem with digital submissions . . . out of sight, out of mind). I simply don’t remember ever seeing it come through, but I must have listened to enough of it to decide that I would download it for the future. Well, folks . . . the future is becoming the present and I’m getting to this outstanding album from Svarti Loghin entitled Drifting Through The Void. Part black metal, part shoegazer, a touch of 90’s Seattle rock, and heavily influenced by some of the 70’s sounds, especially in the way of textures, tones, and general coolness. The interesting aspect about this album is that the band is captured embracing the organic and natural ethos of today’s atmospheric black metal in the way of composition, production, and darkened menace. And yet, there’s still something that these guys are doing that I can’t put my finger on . . . and that makes me want to listen to Drifting Through The Void even more . . . just so I can try to figure out what the hell is going on here!

“Red Sun Sets” opens the album with a nice, eerie atmospheric instrumental piece, filled with pianos and softly strummed strings over the soft and subtle sounds of either a mellow wind blowing across a plain or of water washing across a shore of rock. No matter, it’s an intro that will make you feel like you’re in nature, preparing to get pummeled by the screeching vocals of some face painted dude in a robe. Not quite. While the vocals do eventually assail us with a raw bellow, it’s not exactly that demonic and grating sound that I’ve become accustomed to with the black metal genre that I so expected this album to fall under. Surprisingly, “Kosmik Tomhet” has more of a post-grunge, alternative rock vibe than anything black metal . . . so things are looking up in several ways. The first minute plus of the song is some heavily textured guitar rock, big and dense sustained chords with clear arpeggios being plucked over the rhythm, and then the wall of distortion disappears, almost like the morning fog lifting and the rays of the sun creeping through the air. Then the heavy guitars and bass return, performing a rather uplifting melody . . . and then we’re greeted by the vocals that couldn’t be further from black metal. These vocals have a nice mellow timbre to them and they croon out this haunting melody before doing a complete one-eighty and we’re assailed by the demonic and tortured howls that are more reminiscent of the black metal genre. The music is still creeping along at this shoegazer pace, but the bass drums are thundering away at double time and the vocals are raging in apocalyptic torment. This little epic piece of music runs just under eight minutes long, and it’s so easy to get lost in the texture and atmospherics of the tune. Man . . . what an amazing contrast of styles!

The same ideas run through the next track, “Odelagd Framtid”, ranging from shoegazer/ alt-rock in musical texture and sheering the face off with the deathly howls of black metal, and it’s completely mesmerizing! It’s the title track that seemed to strike me as the most intoxicating, however. Vocally, and maybe a little musically, the melody reminds me of Temple of the Dog. It’s an immediately memorable tune in that I can see myself tooling around the office and humming this one. Shadows of Eddie Vedder linger around the vocal performance, that is, until the middle portion when the tune takes a decidedly dark turn through the woods. The vocals return to the haunted howls of a soul striving to be free of its torment and the music is laced with tendrils of creepiness that one might find in the darkest moments of Katatonia’s greatest hits. And then, it all breaks down to the purest organic elements of an acoustic guitar, bending notes in a very Southern swampy blues style akin to Stephen Stills plowing his way through the riffs of “Black Queen”. Throw in a little harmonica and this portion of the song fits well on any dilapidated porch in Louisiana. I love the vision behind this song . . . it could have gone straight down some dark highway, but Svarti Loghin decided to take a side road and found some incredible moments along the journey.

The band outdo themselves with the nine minute majesty of “Bury My Heart In These Starlit Waters”. Hypnotic as the gentle ebbs and flows of the ocean under a full moon, the music rolls across the horizon of the mind, reflecting hopes, dreams, sadness, and fear. Even when the demonic vocals from the oceanic deep bubble to the surface, I don’t feel the terror that I thought I would or should, it all feels so natural and perfectly fitting. In my mind, this song could easily have been the soundscape behind the Kon-Tiki voyage of 1947 . . . sitting on a raft in the middle of the Pacific ocean, letting the current take the craft wherever the current wanted to go . . . some may want to pop some Dramamine prior to listening to this one.

Drifting Through The Void was a something that I unfortunately missed from 2010 or even 2009. I say unfortunately simply because I would have loved to include this in my year end Top 10 list. But alas, I’ll simply have to spout off about how brilliant it is here and now. It’s an album full of some fantastic cosmic adventures in sound, heavily textured and immensely haunting. It may not appeal to all rock fans because of the heavily intense vocal work, but then again, it may open some to those darker elements of black metal that they were afraid to investigate prior. I love this one. The exclamation point came with Svarti Loghin’s interpretation of Sabbath’s “Planet Caravan”. I heard the opening notes and felt like I was being propelled through space in some cryogenic sleep  . . . half conscious, watching the stars float past my glass enshrouded capsule. Amazing album . . . check out the darkness, folks!

--Pope

Buy here: Drifting Through the Void
Buy here mp3: Drifting Through the Void

http://www.myspace.com/svartiloghin

Prophecy Productions Report: Featuring Alcest, Les Descrits, and Negura Bunget

Prophecy Productions is a German based label that is focused on more of your ambient, atmospheric music, though they don’t limit their releases to purely metallic offerings. There’s some cool acoustic stuff in their coffers to go hand in hand with the darkened black metal material that I seem to keep gravitating towards. What excites me the most about this outfit is the quality of the products that their putting out for us music fans and collectors! Sure, they have your standard fair of CD and digipak releases, but they’re mixing that up with 12” vinyl, split EP’s, and fantastic looking CD art books that highlight the visuals as they pertain to the music. Three bands have burrowed their way into the darker recesses of my brain, Alcest, Les Discrets, and Negură Bunget. All have a similar dark atmospheric sound going on, but once you delve deeper into the sounds permeating from these platters, you should soon find that there are wonderfully subtle, yet striking differences between each band. 

Alcest - Écailles De Lune

It’s like this. You take all those shoegazers who started creeping their uncertain and unconfident way onto stages across the globe in the 90’s, and then, introduce them to Satan. Okay. It’s not exactly like that, but the gist is there. Alcest play a style of black metal (though I hate to pigeon-hole them into that category) that I’ve found completely infectious because it’s filled with so much ambiance and hauntingly gothic melody, and their creation of this music never goes where I expect it to go. One second, I’m expecting blastbeats galore, but they drop whispering guitar strains instead. Or when I am expecting a sound more along the lines of walking around moonlit lake shore, I’m greeted with an explosive discharge of torment vocals and violent guitars.  Écailles De Lune is a complex listen, but somehow, comes across as being very natural. None of the material feels forced and none of the tonal changes sound all that out of place. The album comes across as the guys from Isis having a midnight snack with Quorthon (Bathory) while listening to early Smashing Pumpkins. Huge waves of droning sound working in contrast with the darkened black metal blasts of evil, and then simply drifting into atmospheric passages that, under the influence of the right illicit substances, would completely lift the listener out of themselves.

On the first two tracks of the album, “Écailles De Lune, Part I & II,” Alcest work these musical combinations to perfection. Kicking off the album with moments of melodic trance-y sort of stuff, our heads bobbing in time with the music, our bodies swaying with the flow of sound, all while we have our eyes firmly fixed on the floor. Then, all of those beautiful melodic textures are kicked to the side and replaced by blastbeats and the band is off on an expedition of sonic exploration. The album closes with “Sur L’ocean Couleur de Fen,” which roughly translates (and mind you, my French is rusty) to “Ocean the Color of Iron.” This tune is a spectacular epic of a song that absolutely teleports the listener to a far away seashore, watching as the darkened waves peak and topple of one another, all working their way to pound against the sand and rock of the shore line. The music roils like the open Atlantic, never calm for more than a few moments before the waves lurch us into a life and death struggle against nature. A little over eight minutes in running time, “Ocean” is a song to experience. If you listen to just one song from Alcest, make sure this is the one. Ultimately, you’ll find the sound to be so compelling that you’ll go back and listen to this whole album. www.myspace.com/alcestmusic 

Les Discrets - Septembre Et Ses Dernières Pensées

Along the lines of Alcest’s more melodic moments, Prophecy Productions has delivered us Les Discrets and their latest album entitled Septembre Et Ses Dernières Pensées. This ten track opus is a beautifully majestic piece of ear candy, filled with lush acoustic guitars, ambient guitar passages, and soaring melodies . . . basically, it’s another album that has the power to teleport you, the listener, to faraway lands and potentially leaving you there to wander along the sonic landscape. Every time that I’ve put this disc on, I’ve been able to completely tune out everything around me, which just pleases my wife to no end. There’s sarcasm in that last line. So beware, reader . . . when listening to this album, there’s a good chance that you’ll become so engrossed in the music that you’ll forget about picking up the kids from school, pulling the casserole from the oven before it burns, or even bathing. Even though I don’t understand the lyrical content of this album (it’s all sung in French,) I find that I’m drawn in and clinging to every word. Septembre Et Ses Dernières Pensées is just another testament to the universal appeal of music. Like math, music is a language that transcends borders and cultures.

Though absolutely enthralling as an album, I found myself even more transfixed to the palette of sounds around the mid-point of the disc, particularly with the fifth track, “Sur Les Quaint” and “Effet De Nuit.” The former is sorrowful sounding song powered equally by the sparkling acoustic guitars strumming out the rhythm and the engaging dual vocals. The break in the middle of the song is a nice touch, as the finger picked arpeggios flutter through the listener’s conscious, and then as the plaintive guitar solo echoes from the speakers, you can practically feel some tortured soul tugging softly on the heart. The voices are highly emotive and their performance is executed to perfection. “Effet De Nuit,” on the other hand, shows a different side of the band. Opening with a wall of shimmering cymbals and distorted guitars, this song has an Opethian vibe to it. Dark and sorrowful, the vocals croon in their haunting way, and as the acoustic guitars enter the mix, a sad melody lilts through the more cacophonic din. It’s a brilliantly crafted song, full of tortured emotions and strong musicality. Rays of hope begin to shimmer through the dark clouds of the rest of this album just as this set begins to close. “Une Maintee D’hiver” reminds me of Joshua Tree-era U2 in the way that the music begins to feel orchestrated and uplifting, almost like there’s been a rebirth of our collective outlook on life. Septembre Et Ses Dernières Pensées  is a truly spectacular album. www.myspace.com/lesdiscrets 

Negură Bunget - Măiestrit

I got to thinking while I was listening to this album that I really know very little about the country of Romania. After knowing that Romania is in Europe, I’m out. Well, now I know about Negură Bunget, which apparently means something like the black fog that comes from the forest in the Romanian tongue.  Măiestrit, which translates to ‘masterly’, is a re-recording of 2000’s Măiastru Sfetnic and showcases the bands folk-y, experimental black metal sounds. Upon listening to this album, I’m immediately reminded of Below the Lights-era Enslaved. It’s dark and imposing, but there are fantastic elements of melody and mystery interweaved within the strains of despair. The music on Măiestrit has an organic and natural feel to it, not overly orchestrated or planned out, but almost like a knee-jerk reaction to life. There’s a skin crawling haunting quality to this album, almost the feeling one might get while walking alone through a dark forest, constantly feeling like you’re being watched . . . shadows skittering from tree to tree, leaves softly rustling when there is no wind, the disorienting feeling of the higher mountain altitudes and the evening chill burning the lungs . . . y’know, all that creepy stuff of being alone in a dark forest.

“In-zvicnirea Apusului” is one of those songs that can make the casual metal fan rethink what their stance on black metal. This is one of those near progressive musical pieces that has so much going on in the context of the song and the song relies on every instrument in holding it together. To remove one instrument from the song would have the composition crumble to floor. I love the mix on this as well! One guitar can be heard droning along in one speaker, creating a base for the rest of the music to build, while in the other speaker  a second guitar provides staccato bursts of distortion, giving the song an even more imposing feel to it. “Al Locului” walks along a similar path as the aforementioned song, but this one feels more immediate in its threat to overall health and well being. Catching my attention the most, besides the dual guitar attack, was the ambient swells of keyboards in the back and foreground. This song is more psychologically heavy than it is musically heavy. Though there are a lot of notes flying this way and that, the song never feels so dense that it becomes a detriment. Complex, yes. Pay close attention to the outstanding guitar work towards the last half of the song. That, my friends, is why I listen to this stuff! www.myspace.com/negurabunget 

Of further note, Prophecy Productions is releasing the Negură Bunget’s Măiestrit and Les Discrets’ Septembre Et Ses Dernières Pensées is a unique 56 page picture art book format. They’re hardcover and filled with original photographs and art work that coincides with the albums, and look to be a collector’s wet dream. Check these photos out! www.prophecyproductions.de

  

 

-  Pope JTE