Aluk Todolo - Descension

Year: 2007
Genre: Psychedelic Black Metal/Ambient

This first full-length album shows the band developing the esoteric theorems established on it's debut 7-inch EP, and going far deeper in the methodical exploration of the occult powers of musical trance. With the goal to create a timeless, organic mixing of krautrock's strangeness and grim black metal's coldness, Aluk Todolo conjures rabid obsessive rhythms and abyssal disharmonic guitars, subliminal spiritualist vibrations and bizarre, magick summonings. By reducing psychedelic improvisation to a bare, telluric instrumentation, and basking in the archaic rawness of lo-fi production, the trio elaborates on an audio ritual meant to be monolithic and stabbing, hypnotic but unpredictable, minimalist yet teeming.

Alpha Drone

Year: 2007
Genre: Dark Ambient/Noise/Black Metal

The name Alpha Drone is taken from a science fiction short story inspired by Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" John Gill wrote at a younger age. After seeing the movie "Gattaca" and discovering too many parallels he decided never to publish the story. The name symbolizes the superiority of theozoological eugenics attempting to restore man's divinity over modern "bee-hive" genetic engineering attempting to increase man's economic productivity.

"This album is to be consumed in shimmering twilight and at high volumes. Extreme sleep deprivation, red wine and absinthe as conductors of drifting beyond common perception of reality can add to an optimal effect."

Staruha Mha

Year: 2003
Genre: Tribal Psychedelic Ritual Ambient

The tribal ritual music on this album sounds rather mysterious and distant. The inspiration for this project comes from archaic nature cults and psychedelic experiences. Most tracks have titles which refer to elements of nature. With no less than 80 minutes and 12 long soundscapes “Rusali” is filled to the brim.

You can hear death ambient, with harsh guitar drones and elements of industrial noise. But also more atmospheric passages, with ethno-ambient influences and sounds of field recordings. And indeed, the music of Staruha Mha has something otherworldly or out of line with modern times. I love the deep drones on "Grasses", making me want to close my eyes and wander to ominous ancient landscapes. The music is too noisy to be truly relaxing. But the dense textures have a lot of brooding atmosphere. There is also something machine-like about the music, industrial rumbling soundscapes like "On Branches" or "Deformation" go and and on, disturbed by nothing. A good piece of work if you like dark ambient and ritual drones.

Year: 2004
Genre: Tribal Psychedelic Ritual Ambient

This mysterious and short-living Russian project has always been a kind of unique folklore/musical mythology projection. Its conception seems to be far from modern world in terms of both aesthetics and social issues, taking us back to the roots, where forest is like fairyland, embodying the dream of every hermit creature. Follow-up to the first released, but last ever recorded album "Rusali", "Fires" goes beyond that obscurity edge and features more vivid forms of sound, but never like new-age sweetness. All compositions are undoubtedly anxious, uneasy by the nature; it will surely destroy your afternoon meditation and face you under the hostile, wild and indifferent atmosphere which nevertheless is not going against ambient harmony. Fantastic real music, which is intended in absence of words... Deep solitude softly transformed into selflessness - only ridding oneself of rational thought it was possible to achieve such alienation attitude. This is beautiful and very peculiar work, and there is no real comparison, neither surmising instruments nor similar projects. Sometimes I catch myself at thinking this music was recorded not in a studio but in a real forest, by the supersensitive facility which can feel the aura of the environment.

Maeror Tri - Myein

Year: 1995
Genre: Cosmic Drone

... this man-size slab of ground zero Ambient hints [aptly] at concealment and secrecy and shadow and exclusion, the sweep of sandstorms around silos and the rumble of underground detonations, to the extent that even the tentative melodic praises and half-heard rhythmic patterns which start to appear in track two assume a threatening aspect. Stylish and sumptuous, yes, but beware: with just three tracks in a patience-testing 74 minutes, this is strictly buff stuff for only the most monomaniacal minimalist.

Ad Lux Tenebrae - Sketches From That Autumn

Year: 2006
Genre: Dark Ritual Ambient/Drone

The first official release of Ural project Ad Lux Tenebrae [“Towards the Light of Darkness”] consists of recordings made during “That Autumn”. The main style of Ad Lux Tenebrae’s playing is shamanic, ritual drone, dark ambient, performed [mostly] & fixed with improvised means in a hut in the midst of Ural forest. Ad Lux Tenebrae uses hand-made instruments - a violin with springs instead of strings, which is played with a bow of steel - field recordings, fixed in the forests, swamps and villages of Ural. Harp, acoustic & bass guitars, vocals & voices, as well as old recordings with folk-songs of Bashkir nation were used. Very potent & original album with strong taste of muskarine, fragrance of autumn forest and fierceful mesmerism. Edition of 132 copies, hand-numbered.