Jump to content

Leaderboard

Popular Content

Showing content with the highest reputation on 03/28/24 in Posts

  1. Xenomorph Netherverse 2024 Suntrip Records 1 Sinister Contours 9:17 2 Dying Sun (Sol Aeternus Mix) 8:03 3 War In Heaven 8:35 4 Negative Time (-L Di/-Dt Mix) 8:20 5 No Beginning No End 8:39 6 Nebula Of Souls 7:47 7 Subdimensional Anomaly 8:38 8 Abode Of The Damned 8:46 9 Netherverse 8:38 So Mark Petrick comes in 2024 with Netherverse, his fourth album and the one to accompany 2023's superb ep "Negative Time". Is it any cop? "Sinister Contours" telegraphs Petrick's self-evident intention: he is for sure following the left hand path. This means a heavily arpeggiated track with a threatening minor melody. There'll be no easy upliftment on this album; and no cheese! But isn't the whole gothic darkness thing quite cheesy? Well yeah, if we are talking Twilight movies with aristocratic pretty boy vampires who bling in the sunlight, or perhaps campy Tim Burton style goth-lite. But we are not talking that here. No easy joy, no happy endings, on this sinister path, but plenty of eerie and other disquieting feelings. A "Dying Sun (Sol Aeternus Mix)" is probably my favourite track on the album. Here we are on a space ship and we dive deep into a black hole, indicated by the "our sun is dying... we are dust" sample and another spaceship sample (Petrick is a master of the appropriate sample - he really tells stories with his samples, which are carefully chosen). We sense here how cosmic Xenomorph's vision for this album is. The production quality on this track has to be heard on a good hifi to fully appreciate it - mindblowing. EPIC! A+++ "War In Heaven" starts off with a simple four-note melody that summons up fairy tale horror, but at the half way mark the track shifts up a gear and achieves take off with sawing synths. The "war in heaven" sample states succintly Petrick's apparent philosophy that the tension between good and evil is the propulsive force that drives the universe. A dance floor monster! A+ "Negative Time" is from the accompanying ep of that name. Plenty of pretty tinkles and juddering synth melodies here make for a track that is almost progressive trance - a more mellow track than the ones that preceded it, quite blissed out and dreamy. A "No Beginning No End" is an ourobouros in both concept and in big swirling melodies. These melodies do seem like spiralling nebulae. At 3.15 it turns darker with some delightfully chewy bass 303 and then the spiralling begins again, growing out of the darkness. Another epic trancer with massive melodies. Petrick has worked hard on making these melodies as echoing and big in scale as possible. A "Nebula Of Souls" - I love this slightly more minimal track. It features mysterious vaporous synths at the start, which are utterly beautiful and uplifting in a creepy way. There's a whap-whap sound that continues throughout, giving propulsion; it builds to a grinding climax and then ends on moody cello - simply stunning. A+ "Subdimensional Anomaly" starts with twinkling synths (lots of those sounds on this album) and then builds towards twisting leads against a stumping beat. There's a lovely sense of calm and observation behind this track. A "Abode Of The Damned" is as dark as its title, beginning with a sample about a graveyard and its ghosts. There's a great climbing bass arpeggio that kicks things off and then we have minor key choirs so beloved of dungeon synth and black metal and used quite regularly on Cassandra's Nightmare. This track could easily have been from that first album. At the four minute mark the bass goes into double time and here comes the growly acid that slowly morphs into long pads. Yo party people, are you ready to chew your tongue off and lose your shit? I'd love to see what this track would do to a dancefloor. A+ "Netherverse" - the come down track. Vaporous spacey synth, twangy echoes, a slow beat, eventually builds to the expected long and melancholic pads. I'm a huge fan of sloa Goa, but this is not an especially outstanding example and is the least good track on the album for me. B So is it any cop? You betcha it is. What I particularly liked about this album is that Xenomorph has not stood still, unsurprisingly perhaps as so many years have passed. This is a unique lighter and more cosmic album in his discography. Terrifying, eerie, haunting, sinister, at moments, but also full of cosmic beauty, Xenomorph's vision achieves maturity here. It seems that his albums are all quite different, despite there being strong similarities (not least the superb production and sound quality of all of them). I characterise them like this: Cassandra's Nightmare 1998: cinematic horror trance Qlippoth 2003: spirit possession Demagoguery of the Obscurants 2007: the conspiracy album Netherverse 2024: cosmological darkness and light In this fourth album, it seems to me that Petrick reaches for the stars, seeing the dialectic between light and darkness, matter and space, energy and antimatter, creation and destruction, as the cosmic turbine that powers all. His vision has become epic and fully realised by this point it seems to me in that it appreciates all, including the disgusting and repressed, and values all equally. A divinely balanced cosmic vision. Does such a vision appeal to you? It is a bit early in the year, but I have no doubt that this is already one of my records of the year. Actually, my only strong criticism of this album and the ep is the cover art - weak in both cases. Finally, I am inspired to look back over his oeuvre as the body of work that triggered an entire (sub-)genre: darkpsy. You could argue against this notion, pointing out the other great dark Goa albums that helped ignite darker psychedelic trance: Sandman's Witchcraft, Orichalcum and the Deviant Orichalcum and the Deviant, Cydonia Fear of a Red Planet, UX Ultimate Experience, and so on. This would be correct: all played their part. Nevertheless, nothing was nearly as dark and scary as Cassandra's Nightmare and it remains the keystone album. So Xenomorph's latest album deserves to be seen in this wider context as part of the genre that his first album kickstarted. Amazing what can come out of watching a few horror movies and being open-minded enough to meld trance with industrial and metal. ~*~
    1 point
  2. A long-awaited album by the master of dark goa & psychedelic trance! We got a taster of some of these tracks in Xenomorph's ZNA Gathering 2019 set (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN3N1BEkHB8) and finally five years later the new album is released. However, not all the tracks from that performance, such as the amazing Atrocity Archive, were released on either the recent EP nor this album - hopefully another release is upcoming. Further, a few of the tracks are mixes of existing released tracks with very minor changes. Why do I love Xenomorph's music? 1) A huge part of why I like psychedelic music overall is its ability to create powerful atmospheres. Xenomorph is almost unmatched at that. His tracks tell stories ranging the whole spectrum of darkness from apocalyptic hopelessness to unhinged lunacy to stony-faced esoterica. 2) Xenomorph's melodies are very strong. Classic tracks like Abominations are surprisingly melodic. The combination of dark storytelling talent with melodic payoffs does much more for me than most later darkpsy. 3) Lastly, Xenomorph kept forging a unique path, each album is novel and just so different to what anyone else was doing at the time. It's no surprise that he's gained many fans with this uncompromisingly creative approach. 01 Sinister Contours This track's name describes it perfectly. The first half feels like an intro to the moment when the sinister contours really kick in at around 5:00 with tense eastern melodies, croaking acid, and spooky samples. The main lead is brought back in and the tension just ratchets up and up with so many intertwining ominous layers. A build up which we might anticipate leading to a break down actually leads to the addition of an off-beat clap along with an echoing foreboding sound at 6:55. A driving new melody starts emerging and and at 7:45 most layers drop away leaving this new theme. The pressure release ultimately happens at 8:00 when a cheeky goa melody drops! At this point I have a huge grin on my face. Despite how much I love this track, some aspects seem a little overprocessed for my taste, such as the main lead when it first comes in. The break at 6:50, which was previously understated in the ZNA Gathering clip with just the clap added, now also brings in another layer which makes that section a little crowded - maybe my headphones need upgrading. 02 Dying Sun (Sol Aeternus Mix) A fantastic song already released on the Gamma Draconis compilation. I didn't do a detailed comparison but it sounds like the bassline has been thickened and some minor tweaks have been made (the original track did have poor mastering for some reason), otherwise everything is the same. The storytelling of the sense of melancholia about the dying sun is beautifully expressed. 03 War In Heaven This one is a cool change of mood and pace, and recalls industrial/EBM artists like Velvet Acid Christ and Hocico when they have dabbled in trance. Less of the high-tech psy leads or Xenomorph's signature menacing atmosphere. The focus is more on danceable high energy with a gothic touch that can actually end up sounding euphoric. The interlacing arpeggiated melodies at 4:00 are absolutely gorgeous!! 04 Negative Time (-L Di-Dt Mix) Again, it says this is a mix but the version sounds pretty much identical to what was released in the Negative Time EP. The track takes off like a rocket with a bouncy bassline, and at 0:55 comes a massive and absolutely delicious lead. Then a slower response section with more metallic sounds, which finally runs out of energy at 2:40. Suddenly to be replaced by another massive resonant lead, mirrored by a shimmering second melody, I could listen to this section all day as the modulations sound so nice. A series of acid melodies slowly build up the energy back to a metallic section, it's clear we're heading for something big. At 6:40 there's a spine-tingling breakdown leading to a very old-school goa climax! 05 No Beginning No End Not such a fan of this track personally, feels like it's perched between the styles of the last two tracks. Lots of interesting ideas but not structured with the urgency of previous tracks nor with any real stand out sections. The only dud on the album. 06 Nebula Of Souls Yet another change of style, this track is more of a slow-burner compared to the others and evokes the mood of hopelessness and weirdness most similar to the Qlippoth album. Intriguing start feels like being in a space station drifting through freezing space. Again the title is fitting. At 3:00 a crunchy growling lead starts to takes the fore. The track builds up in intensity until at 5:45 a sad stringed instrument melody comes in. I can see why for some fans this would be the top pick of the album, it's easily the darkest track here. 07 Subdimensional Anomaly Time for another more trancey track, but with a pensive mood. Big sweeping pads and a lot of more subtle layers over the top take us all the way to 3:00 where we get a radiant psy lead along with a big snappy snare. The track doesn't evolve in any major way from here but doesn't need to. It's absolutely beautiful. 08 Abode Of The Damned This one heavily reminds me of Cassandra's Nightmare, still my most loved Xenomorph album. The first half has the twisted horror style with a playful array of spooky squelchy sounds. The second half breaks out into powerful melodies that just get better and better on top of a pumping bassline. The melodies aren't particularly memorable however unlike the previous track. 09 Netherverse Wow a rare psybient track from Xenomorph, this one also wouldn't have felt out of place as the last track on many oldschool albums. The first half is deeply atmospheric and intriguing, similar to Koxbox's Searching For Psychoactive Herbs. Unfortunately the change of direction that feels like it's coming at some point never does arrive, besides a small modulation near the end. Still an enjoyable track but could have been more. Overall, there's a large variety of styles here, and at first I think this makes the album as a whole difficult to comprehend. It's harder to fully appreciate tracks 7 and 8 after you've just listened to the nightmare tour de force of Nebula of Souls. After repeated listens I really appreciate the quality of each track and there's only one that I feel is weak. Perhaps the biggest surprise is how euphoric a few of the tracks are, especially Negative Time, one of the least dark songs Xenomorph has produced. But still has that signature intensity and urgency and I love it. I'm a sucker for the big psychedelic leads used and production level is high as you'd expect. I expect the range of styles is due to the long time period this album took to put together, and my only disappointment is we didn't see more new tracks instead of a few minor mixes of existing songs.
    1 point
  3. Artist: Various Title: New Blood II Label: Timecode Records Date: October, 2008 1. Principles of Flight - Oblivion 2. Artifakt Vs. Lost & Found - Checkmate 3. Rubix Qube - Enter the Dojo 4. Phyx - Freejack 5. Cybernetix - Root Complex 6. Tryambaka - Evil Mistress 7. EMP - Attack of the Moose 8. Tickets - Harpsicheek 9. Pitch Hikers - 40 Days Oh Timecode...why have you forsaken us? What is this new land we find ourselves in? It is in truth perplexing. Either we have been submerged into a cesspool of commercialism where the next buildup and drum fill is more epic than the last. Or we have descended into madness where once again melody is treated like the clap and atmosphere has all but evaporated. In truth I don't blame you Timecode, the once mighty label that forced imitators to their knees and rumbled the very Earth upon which they trod. I miss the post apocalyptic atmospheres, the rumbling bass, and the sinister melodies of what seems long ago. The label has now morphed into Sangoma Records and doesn't hold the same appeal. Shame. Rest assured that the window panes of my ample dwelling reverberate with furious anger from your releases. This is one such compilation. Oblivion- The mood is dark and eerie with a great POF track to open. Not a lot of melody, but power and fear can go a long way. Checkmate- Can a track be both funky and foreboding? *Alex Trebek enters* "A horse, sounds of torture, and a chess match play by play." What is the break room of my former employer on a Friday? This is a delectable groove and demands movement. Crazy dynamic collaboration between these two great artists. Enter the Dojo- more big beats and acid. This was more of a straight ahead beating rather than a track that attempts to tell a story. Use it accordingly. Freejack- This is another great, groovy track that will raise the blood pressure. Easy to get caught up in the swirl of acid. The only thing keeping it from legendary status was the buildup at the end. Root Complex- Machine humming sci-fi psychedelia that could've been more. Good, but left me wanting. Evil Mistress- Pounding soundtrack to a bad trip. Lovely. Attack of the Moose- is more high tempo, minor key madness. Quite the mover. Harpsicheek- This is Tickets taking psytrance to a place that it was won't to go. More involved full-on, but still heavy with the acid. Good stuff. 40 Days- I was getting ready to hit you with the meh shoulders, but then the 2nd half of the track happened. Man I miss the good old days of Timecode. Back when they and Nexus Media were at the forefront of dark melodic music. This is super stuff with power, acid, and moody atmospheres. Unfortunately they don't make 'em like this no more. Can't go wrong with this trip down memory lane. Timecode Bandcamp Beatspace Digital
    1 point
  4. A good compilation for sure!
    1 point
  5. Wow John, your most thought provoking review ( if you can call it that) so far, reading this gives me great pleSure and reassurance the road to the 5th, still rocky, with a wobbly wheel, but lucky I got a spare! I never appreciated xenomorph fully until after this, however invokes something different every time, you summed it up with free will, kind of wish more would understand this concept, in Hollywood we had movies like devils advocate,for the youngins labyrinth, that introduced me to this, then of course Clive Barker and Lovecraft who define the true dark arts, amazing how concepts like satanism have been inverted and embraced in Hollywood, yes people if you watch netflix and all that stuff, you are a Satanist, be careful who you pray to, technology god pretty powerful as is the money and sex god, however xenomorph is his own egregor I shall pray to till the end of time, as above so below... Hell yeah! And man the new album is killah, just hope can get Cassandra on cd some day to complete the collection, play them all at same time!!gonna be something there John I know it, kind of like the puzzle box! And gonna read that book you mentioned, Nice to see you still kickin bro, miss your reviews, see you in the 5th
    1 point
  6. I fucking love Drezz and think he's one of the finest producers of psychedelic music in the scene today. This might not be Mama Matrix Most Mysterious or 13 Amp Fusion, but this is great and a solid journey. Much much love ❤️
    1 point
×
×
  • Create New...