REVIEW BY MATT of ANCESTRAL FOLKWAYS MAGAZINE: www.myspace.com/ancestralfolkways


Based out of Portland, Oregon, A Minority of One's recent release “Bathe In Fiery Answer” features the combined musical talents of contributors Jason and Arrowyn Craban (also of Hex Magazine fame), Markus Wolff (Waldteufel/Crash Worship), Jason O'Neill and James Woodhead among others. Overall A Minority of One's style is avant-garde, experimental and eclectic, with strong elements of the psychedelic. According to their liner notes: “This collection of recordings is an exploration of decline and sickness, compost and collapse... Contained here is the story of Nidhogg who undermines and fells the World Tree gnawing at its roots; exposing the rot of every choice made against our higher values and better intentions.” Indeed, they certainly succeed in channeling these very elements with an effectiveness that leaves a haunting impression upon the listener. Appropriately, with an emphasis upon these aforementioned themes, the album does indeed capture and resonate with an eerie, primordial chthonic energy within its tracks- many of which are instrumental arrangements interspersed with bleak chants and spoken word segments, partaking of a dynamic that is at once ordered and chaotic, with an overall desolate, grim ambience.


The album opens with “Wave Rolls”, a grim subterranean dirge centered upon somber, deep-throated hypnotic chants overlapped with haunting, melancholic, discordant vocal harmonies, imparting a sense of delirium. “Cambry (Hart of the Chyld)”, opens with a majestic, droning horn section amidst a forested backdrop, and quickly progresses to a build up of a frenetic nervous energy, at once chaotic and ordered, and so creates an interesting dichotomy between distinctly organic ritualistic sounds and cold mechanical industrial loops and samples which is on one hand corrosive and grinding, and on the other primordial and ritualistic. “Full Spectrum Dominance” imparts an eerie ambient otherworldly soundscape, with an ominous hypnotic percussive arrangement replete with haunting, cryptic sound samples reminiscent of a fever dream. “Gnawer From Beneath” (referring to Nidhogg) resonates with a foreboding, desolate energy, minimalistic yet atmospheric in its own right by way of corrosive, industrial instrumental arrangements and samples, interspersed with droning vocal harmonies and chaotic percussive segments. “Lungs” is a macabre, cryptic spoken word piece set amidst a chilling, spectral musical backdrop. “Breathe” resonates with a heavy, restless, sickly turmoil, a descent into a nightmarish and primeval gloom. Their cover of “Tomorrow Never Knows” provides an interesting minimalistic deconstructed adaption of the well-known Beatles song, carried by discordant chime and bell arrangements, and baleful, dreamlike vocals. “Peat Fire Flame” is imbued with a tribal, shamanic atmosphere with flowing, old world harmonies and heroic, mystic vocal melodies. “She” is an arrangement complemented by brooding bass line, melancholic guitars, ominous , ghostly vocal harmonies carried upon waves of etherial, trance-like chants. Overall, a fascinating and striking experimental collection of songs and soundscapes.