MP3 alphane moon - experimenting with an amen

weird drone noise folk

8 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Psychedelic, FOLK: Modern Folk



Details:
Those familiar with Dafydd and Ruth Roberts' work as Our Glassie Azoth may find their Alphane Moon work something of a different (but not wholly so) kettle of fish. Instead of the fractured drones of their other incarnation, Alphane Moon (the name derives from a Philip K. Dick novel) generally favors a more delicate, often acoustic glaze. It's the kind of work that the calmer side of Flying Saucer Attack also showed itself to be readily adept at, though The Echoing Grove, recorded in 1994 but not released until some years later, avoids the overall textured wash of that group for a more deliberate mix, with each element clearly heard in the total arrangement. Heavy echo is used throughout, making a basic guitar pluck sound stretched out and an electric touch even more strangely alien. "Circle of Four," with its clean lead line backed by sudden freakouts reverberating into the endless beyond, and the laser-shot distortion of "Lunadial" both make a specific virtue of space -- the sounds created have an almost textured approach, surrounded by silence. The meditative rise and fall of heavily processed tones on "To Almandine," shot through here and there with sudden straightforward guitar plucking, and the buried acid rock riff of "Saltsea," surrounded by moodier noise, also add to the sometimes-dreamy, sometimes-nightmarish feeling. There's not much in the way of vocals, but "A Closed Gate" has Dafydd's singing prominent, if incredibly flanged to near incomprehensible levels, while the concluding epic "Reap a Field of Light" starts off as a gentle folk song, though turning into an open-ended electric trip by the end. Other murky howls and electronic meditations of Our Glassie Azoth aren't missing either, as the introductory "An Open Entrance" or the sheet-metal feedback distortions toward the end of "Lunadial" demonstrate. Ned Raggett, All Music Guide



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 enoughâ 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 nameâso 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 thereminâbasically 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 preciselyâthe 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 compositionâthere 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 marriageâ "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 noisyâthe shriek that kicks off the album's first track is as punishing as anything on its flipsideâbut 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 discâit 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.