Artist: Cave Walker / Blut
Title: Split
Type: Album
Label: Fogged Entity / digital
Today on Mausoleum Monday we most definitely are down in the darkness with a split from two reclusive artists that fit together so well I’d rather think of this as a shared project than a split. They feed into each other so perfectly.
Firstly we have Cave Walker, with ‘The Hive’ an eighteen minute passage of darkness. It is a quiet but deeply omninous opening. A slow clanking sound, rhythmic but somehow decayed, builds up the ebb and flow of drone. A deep reverberation begins which heightens the feel that there is some…some engine or artefact here as though we have stumbled into a vast space and for the first time in perhaps centuries human eyes have seen the vast shadowy shape presented.
The Hive is built with slow subtle layers of sound; as the up front muisc begins to add a sense of awe, there are noises like a chittering in the background and something broken clanking and dragging. We get choral sounds emphasising the space that we are in which suggests a stillness even as the dray clank and rag persists. Gradually it all seems to recede, so slowly that you don’t know if you have moved or whatever you were before has somehow shifted. Even the rhythmic strikes fade until only the softest of those choral sounds persist. But that noise, the metallic sound resurges before slowly the Hive fades.
‘VIII’ begins with a similar dark, slow build of music conjuring the idea of for unknown reasons finding yourself in darkness, before a slow riff begins. A winding melody, solemn bass and hissing cymbals, a repetitive motion that collapses into a sudden unexpected roar of black metal. Feral vocals twisting as the monomaniacal riff plunges onwards until the burst simply falls away and we are left bewildered in a space where voice gargle and gabble from the shadows, sometimes catching our ear when we turn the other way. A guiatr rises once more, turning the same melody over and over before falling back, quiet returning and then returning once more but this time with menace. The furious and raw black metal bites hard and a shadowy melody loops around it. It falters at last and ‘VIII’ slides back to the silence in squeals and feedback, its destruction wrought.
It is a curious split, yes, but for me it works so well as one seems to feed into the other, which takes it in different direction, another part of the place we find ourselves in. It is a journey to be sure but I think one well worth taking. Give it a listen and see what you think.
Gizmo
https://cave-walker.bandcamp.com/
Walking The Liminal Space 