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alphane moon / our glassie azoth, experimenting with an amen / the magician's heavenly chaos
Students of alchemy, that compelling science-in-ruins, know that "azoth" is one of alchemy's four symbolic substances. The other three, mercury, sulphur, and salt, are all familiar enough— azoth is the one that's truly cryptic, described variously as a mysterious life force, an invisible fire, or a river of living water. It's thought, by some, that azoth is a sort of proto-electricity, or that electricity is azoth itself under a different name—so the name Our Glassie Azoth suggests something cryptic, slippery, and above all, enthralled by the transfiguring fire-water of current.
In this regard, the three Azoth tracks that make up the "Magician's Heavenly Chaos" half of this album don't disappoint: each of them are a long-form experiment in attempting to harness (or to liberate) a wild torrent of primal electrical squall. It's impossible to tell exactly what is generating the sounds captured here: it could be an analogue synth, guitar feedback, an array of test-tone oscillators, a theremin—basically these tracks sound like pure unrefined voltage, given voice. And it turns out voltage has a personality: it chatters, it wails, it thrums menacingly and veers chaotically. It evolves patterns which then disintegrate, other patterns corroding it cancerously from within.
This music is hard to situate precisely—the band's from Wales, but if I were hearing these tracks without that knowledge I'd probably guess Japan (at its noisiest it recalls the terrifying white-hot typhoons of analogue-era Merzbow, and at its most delicate it could be the spastic cousin of sinewave minimalists like Sachiko M or Toshimaru Nakamura). Listen with a slightly different ear, though, and it's suddenly reminiscent of a 1960s American electronic composition—there are moments that could be from a lost Tod Dockstater tape-piece, some occluded moon of Quatermass.
The album's opening half is contribued by sister act Alphane Moon, which, if I understand correctly, is the Our Glassie Azoth folks recording under a different name (or vice versa). I know that, of the band's two faces, Alphane Moon is the one that explicitly invokes the moon, but, frankly, they seem like the solar half of this sacred marriage— "The Magician's Heavenly Chaos" is all about lunatic darkness, whereas "Experimenting With An Amen" seems more willing to cast a few beams of illumination to guide the wary. It's still noisy—the shriek that kicks off the album's first track is as punishing as anything on its flipside—but the noise is consistently tempered with warm, hazy drones. Take the second track, "Opal Fire," for instance: overlook the occasional wraithlike keening, and it could pass for one of the otherworldly bog-spaces on Eno's On Land. There are even a few side-steps into wyrd-folk territory: "Cyngor y Borgen" is a straight-up acoustic ballad, sung in Welsh, which is paired with "Further," which sounds more like Nick Drake than it sounds like anything else on either half of the record.
These are brief digressions, though, and before you know it we're at the final Alphane Moon track. This track, "Usk," is the one which makes an attempt to form a union between the two acts on this disc—it opens with magnificent pulsating sheets of noise which seem like they belong more readily to the Our Glassie Azoth side of things, but then the noise gradually clears, replaced by a palette of calming electronic arpeggiations and what sounds like a distant flute, revealing the gentler hand of Alphane Moon. It's a lovely, hermaphroditic piece, showcasing the best side of each of these intriguing acts.
On Oggum.
Hear: "Usk"
(Note: this is part of an occasional feature where we'll post MP3s of bands we review for as long as the review remains on the front page of the blog. Once the review goes into the archives, the MP3s will be removed. Special thanks to Daffyd for his kind permission.)
This review has been cross-posted to ThaumaturgyLabels: audio, mp3s, music_commentary |
Thursday, April 07, 2005
9:57 AM
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