15/06/2023
Latest review, thanks Antonio Martin!
NATURALE - "MEDITATION OVER MØRKET" (YOSHIWARA COLLECTIVE 310/ Svensk Psych Aften 019 / Vinyltroll #15 / Virkelighedsfjern Vir064; 2023)
Today we are going to put a pill under the tongue and see things that are not of this world with Meditation Over Mørket by the Danish NATURALE.
Get ready because this trip is not going to leave a puppet with a head. Behind the project we have the musician Kristian Andersen (Kriller) known from the Danish scene of Stoner Psych Doom more bizarre as the Uden Himmel, God Dam, Katla, Lucid Grave, Måneskjold, Rocket Gravy or Solens Folk ... names that move in the strictest underground especially through the label Virkelighedsfjern (and its derivatives Dyreriget that releases especially 7" and Olmen Tapes for cassettes). Defining the music of all these bands can be complex but they are almost structured as a result of a filthy hinge of Space Rock and Doom but to tell the truth, the thing gets quite complicated when we face NATURALE. Created back in 2015 if I'm not mistaken, it publishes Apex 3 (It War Gnarled) mixing Doom and Space Rock, which is followed by a more ambient live cassette entitled Live 2018 edited by Virkelighedsfjern as well as a 2020 EP called Lyset that I have not had the opportunity to listen to anything.
We arrive in 2023 and in pristine vinyl format we have the edition of this Meditation Over Mørket that has me fu***ng trapped as in an infectious-contagious loop; as I say, it is released in co-publishing between the cult Irish label Yoshiwara Collective with Svensk Psych Aften, Vinyltroll and Virkelighedsfjern. Although I do not have the previous works and I have only heard them above, the latter has reminded me of the Finns Jääportit but in a much more numinous and ethereal or hypnotic (almost liturgical) wave and that comes to be a kind of steely and Dark Ambient reinvention of a resurrected Florian Fricke in Popol Vuh. Imagine mixing a very obscure apocryphal Kraut album with the sinusoidal dalliances of Group 1850 or the mythical Algarnas Tradgard with touches of Coil, Nurse with Wound and Current 93. Or I know... Fursaxa with Swans if you pinch my testicle. By the way, mastering by Joakim Wölm which is also usual in this whole circle of bands around Kriller.
It also shines a kind of Neo Folk (acid) very strange and Martian that rubs and much with the Drone and Psychedelia to which we must add the technical details. Recorded in a house in Sweden near Strömstad (I imagine that the one that can be seen in the vinyl photograph by Sven Kruppa I think owner of the Svensk Psych Aften label and playing in groups like Älgarna Från Värmland); floats a captivating spiritual atmosphere and sometimes close to those great works of Jacula or Antonius Rex but passed by an acrid and necrotic martial and funeral sheet. Slow tempos... Claustrophobic... Vocals recited and throat singing floating on sheets of field recordings, barely whispered guitars and synthesizers that sound brutally analog.
Opens the album "Mørket". Field recordings ranging from subtle iron beats to flaming flames are wrapped in purely folk chants underlined by what looks like a Theremin or something like that. Enter a languid guitar that merges with the keyboards in the purest Canterbury style... but as if bands like Camel or Caravan were in a funeral or playing on the edge of the precipice that gives rise to the end of the fu***ng cosmos. Minimalist percussion and the feeling that I have been given a strange concoction in an apocalyptic sect and it is making me afraid of not knowing if I will wake up tomorrow. Kriller's heartfelt voices are apotheosic and homiles. Like playing Vanilla Fudge stuff at 21 revolutions per minute. It follows "Lysmaskiner / Slukket" with an opening very much to the Popol Vuh or Ash Ra Tempel. Magnificent atmosphere of majestic and epic keyboards that touch the Tangerine Dream and Schulze ... Pure meditative and minimalist gliding music (I do not know if there is guitar and pedalboards involved, but I imagine there is.
Minute seven and bursts percussion changing the evolution of the music towards a kind of NEU! in ultra op**te version, slow and Lo-Fi. Sublime. We continue with "Vi Fortærer Skoven For At Dræbe Mørket" with an ultra-liturgical organ in the purest JACULA style. Repetitive 'ad nauseam' and creating a base on which atavistic chants of Celtic / Viking court move. Looped voices on which is added another more serious type Tibetan Throat Singing in addition to recordings such as sharpening of swords (a la Sol Invictus and similar). I knew it... It was clear to me from the beginning; The Celtiberians come from outer space. The album closes with the brutal 15 minutes of "Ilden", in which Morten Bastkjær collaborates on bass.
In the purest style of the Hindu Morning Ragas, the music is built in a spiritual way; a repetitive touch of bass strings on a background of luminescent keyboards until with the entrance of a martial percussion we fall into lands of the Dungeon Synth plus Doom with brief but great irruptions of distortion Drone. Very difficult to label this Meditation Over Morket that as I catch the day I notice it more like a Space Rock played at oily speeds and as slow as the time it takes to pass two Kali Yugas. Fabulous tristona voice, languid and accompanied by piano / guitar and bubbly, effervescent effects of the potentiometers of the synths (impossible not to remember Tusmorke).
Little more I can add about one of the albums that has caught me the most so far this year. Simply ESSENTIAL.
Purchase here:
https://yoshiwaracollective.bigcartel.com/product/regen-graves-climax-a5-digi-cd
https://virkelighedsfjern.bandcamp.com/track/vi-fort-rer-skoven-for-at-dr-be-m-rket
from the album Vir064: Meditation Over Mørket
