Genre: Death Ambient

01 No Good Can Come Of This
02 Welcome To The House
03 Walking Timeless Halls
04 Opening Forgotten Doors
05 Desperation
06 The Grand Ball Commences
07 These Rooms Are Alive
08 Short Road To Hell
09 To The Mountain

This is atmospheric stuff. I’m quite often left bored to tears by so-called dark ambient music, as a few drones and creaks are mixed with some clanks and rumbles as it meanders on for an hour going nowhere. This does not meander – it creeps and slithers and occasionally lunges at you.

Behind the slightly incongruous stack of meat on the cover is a CD of nine pieces of disturbingly creepy churning sonic nastiness. The instrumentation stays about the same throughout the album – grinding or moaning analogue synthesizers, metallic clatter and unexpected clanks, and rhythms either soft and biological or abnormally mechanic. This is not an album that attacks from the front with a barrage of noise or percussion. This music builds slowly and mysteriously until it surrounds you, then begins to envelop and smother you. It’s a slow process and a wonderfully dark and unpleasant one at that.

‘No Good Can Come Of This’ does begin with a blast of sharp sound, but this is subsumed into the churning morass of rumbling bass and high tones which could sound angelic were it not for the dark omenous atmosphere closing in around you. And so we enter. ‘Welcome To The House’ is not welcoming at all; a buzzing, looping drone and muffled voices are joined by rattling door handles and a white noise that whispers in our ear warning us to go no further. But we press on. ‘Walking Timeless Halls’ finds us edging along nervously; this track is made up of drones and held sounds, without rhythm or any percussive element, and is redolent of abandoned corridors that we don’t really want to explore but find we must.

Continuing our exploration of the House of Flesh, ‘Opening Forgotten Doors’ – as anyone who’s ever watched a horror movie should know – is never a good idea, because there’s always Something lurking behind them. This track is a slow-building, looping progression of ever-more-intense sound, building the anticipation of what may come. ‘Desperation’ finds us trapped, perhaps by whatever was released from behind the forgotten doors. A heartbeat rhythm and a slow, moist breathing gives this piece a distinctly biological feel, at least until harsher, more metallic sounds begin to intrude towards the end.

‘The Grand Ball Commences’ feels like we’re eavesdropping on a ballroom down a length of metallic ducting as the sounds are echoed into something unrecognisable. It feels like there’s some music behind all these echoes and metallic drones, but it’s just out of reach.

All of a sudden, things get really nasty. ‘These Rooms Are Alive’ and ‘Short Road To Hell’ are much more sonically harsh than anything previous. ‘These Rooms…’ starts with a grinding, piercing sound and builds in intensity as echoed voices, howls of anguish perhaps, are added to the mix. ‘Short Road…’ rings like an infernal bell behind a chitinous chorus calling for us to be dragged into the pit. ‘To The Mountain’ doesn’t leave us feeling any safer; if anything its as enclosed and threatening as before, and doesn’t seem to offer much in the way of an escape route. Indeed its engine-room rhythm and doom-laden bass drones seem to suggest something unpleasant awaits.…

This is how ambient music of any stripe should work – the music should envelop you, wash over you and surround you, and carry you along with it. This being dark music, it should carry with it the appropriate mood of dread or doom or oppression. You should never be bored by it, you should never be waiting for it to do something, and you certainly shouldn’t be waiting for the next track. ‘The House of Flesh’ does it right; each track is individual enough for there to be a good sense of variety through the album, but is coherent enough to hold the whole piece together. Tracks never outstay their welcome. The track titles are evocative and fit the mood of the music perfectly. This is my first exposure to Luasa Raelon or the work of David Reed, and by the look of his website he’s fairly prolific. I will be looking out for more works by him.