The self-titled CDR release from Cambridge-based ambient and drone musician Antidröm is a sharp and provocative title, making clever and complex use of horror samples and industrial, percussive and decaying drone loops to create a chilling and complex experience.
This is Antidröm’s second release, after 2012’s cassette First Things First. Where the first release was complex but upbeat, the second represents a sea-change in the kinds of effects and layers that he is working with. A movement toward the dark and the strange.
“Love supreme” kicks off the release with horror-film cuts and decaying loops, backed against a stuttering of drum samples. Underneath it builds up a machine-gun metallic beat and a use of slides and tone clusters reminiscent of Henry Cowell, all those years ago. “Holy Mountain” also has a decayed film-sample quality, with beating primitive drums and Hammer Horror-like vocals, reminiscent of Victorian Gothic horror (if Poe made drone music). It represents a clever and innovative use of flute samples, loose drums and vocals that have an oddly rhythmic, ecstatic effect, like watching some ancient Aztec blood ritual through the too-hot leaves of a rainforest. “Rashomon” again makes use of vocals, samples and drone loops against a wind underlayer that gives it a hallucinatory impression, connecting the sounds with a sense of ritual and ancient, deep time. The spare use of percussion and tightening and loosening synths in the piece adds an unexpected sci-fi element to it, showing how ably the record as a whole works with its sources and samples. “Flatline” has a breathless and complex rhythm pattern to its synths and percussion, representing the most science fictional piece on the record. The use of cross-rhythm is a strong feature across the tracks, but it’s particularly good here. In contrast, Gog Magog has a slow and sorrowful bell-loop that rises and falls against a sample that sounds almost like distant gunfire. This wave pattern builds up and gives space to a reedy, off-key harmony that gives the sense of a quiet, timeless energy.
The record as a whole—nicely designed by Grady Gordon—has an energy and complexity to it that makes clever and unusual use of rhythms and samples, particularly in its eerie use of voice. There are clear influences with Biosphere and Sunn O))), but it also takes its own unique direction that plumbs the soundscapes of horror and darkness in interesting, chilling ways.
Antidröm is available on The Association for Depth Sound.
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