Artist: The Devil And The Universe
Title: Haunted Summer
Genre: Dark Ambient
Release Date: 31st October 2014
Label: (aufnahme + wiedergabe)
Album Review
In less capable hands this could have been a real stinker. An album of dark ambient ritualistic soundscapes and samples, meshed together by allocating rhythmic cycles and chords to randomly selected cards from the Tarot does not sound like something to play in the car, pre-Christmas. But WHISPERS IN THE SHADOW main-man Ashley Dayour not only knows his way around big, bold atmospherics, but his subject matter is both perfectly researched and close to his heart. 'Haunted Summer' then, avoids being both some awful concept album horror or a bloated self-indulgence, but instead emerges as something deeply sinister, and powerfully emotional.
The title track wastes no time in setting the mood, a fiery hot slab of creeping eeriness, it's BLACK SABBATH's 'Iron Man' put to a horror movie soundtrack, the tribal drum and sludge riffing conjuring up all manner of nastiness. 'Stygian', that follows is an entirely different story. It still maintains that dark underbelly but employs synths and a middle-eastern motif to the ritual percussion and guitars to lend this a mystique you could imagine KILLING JOKE's Jaz Coleman nodding along to in his candlelit bathtub. It's wonderful stuff. And the erotic occultism of KILLING JOKE can be heard elsewhere in the loops and disjointed voices of 'Cloak of Dispersion' or on the furious dervish of 'The Goat Head'.
'Haunted Summer' is consistently varied and constantly intriguing. There are little currents of desperate sadness here and there, a lurking sense of great evil at times, or the overwhelming feeling of being in the presence of some frighteningly vast deity. It's the nagging yearning of just being on the edge, of standing on a tiny hill and being made to feel almost insignificant as the dizzying vastness of the stars and the universe dance above you. That's quite a trick. And it comes through clearly on both 'The Curse Of Byron' and 'Phantasmagoria', where again, the feeling of tapping into something hidden, darkly dangerous and ancient is almost overwhelming. The album ends with 'Gipfelrausch', tropical birdsong echoing distantly, an otherworldly beauty and fragility somehow giving way to a melancholy sense of nostalgia for something barely remembered. It's a quietly dignified and grandiose passage of music that gives an inner calm made all the more staggering because of the turmoil and torment that has gone before it.
This album represents a significant achievement for THE DEVIL AND THE UNIVERSE, it's rich layers, assured occultism and dynamic and powerful atmospherics making it an absolute aural and visual feast. Sink into this, lose yourself inside it, and you'll not emerge the same. And if that's not the ultimate aim of art and music, then what is?
Tracklist
01. Haunted Summer
02. Stygian
03. Cloak Of Dispersion
04. Danaus Plexippus
05. The Goat Head
06. The Curse Of Byron
07. Calling Of The Shades
08. Phantasmagoria
09. Gipfelrausch
10. Elisa Fields (bonus track)
11. Womb Of The Night (bonus track)
12. Haunted Meadow (bonus track)
13. Diodati 1816 (bonus track)
Line-up
Ashley Dayour - Instruments, Vocals
David Pfister - Instruments, Field Recordings
Stefan Elsbacher - Drums, Synths
Website
http://www.thedevilandtheuniverse.com/ / https://www.facebook.com/TheDevilAndTheUniverse
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 9
Sound: 9
Total: 9 / 10
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