This is not a place to look for serenity or quietude, as the two grimly conjoin their respective musical arts in a paean to sadness and melancholy, the rain falling unrelenting, plangent piano drenched in despair and desolation. These seemingly forlorn funerals are, though, not dispirited, but charged with intent, directed towards the search for spiritual truth.
[Release page] Day Before Us is Philippe Blache’s acoustic micro-tonal ambient project, and Under Mournful Horizons is a first full-length outing with Giuseppe Verticchio, aka Nimh, The release bears the inky stamp of the Roman ‘ambient-electronic-ethnic-experimental musician,’ whose work has seen the light (however dim) on Malignant, Eibon, and Silentes. As a collaborator he has previous, with fellow-Italians Maurizio Bianchi and Andrea Marutti/Amon, as well as Aube and Amir Baghiri. Frenchman Blache (incidentally, an Igloo contributor) deals in ‘antipop-cinematic-nocturnal-melancholic soundscapes,’ claiming inspiration from ‘odd literature, ghostly presence, angelology, cinematic poetry and magic realism,’ issuing in ‘solemn soundscaping ritualism, dada-esque hypnopedies and soundtracky ambiences’ with sometime sustenance from field recordings. Blache is evidently well attuned to Italian neo-gothic ambience, trailing the post-industrial trappings of Thanatos and Eschaton, with titles like “Contemplatio Mortis,” making a perfect match for Verticchio’s dolorous inclinations (cf. This Crying Era).
The conceptual background is implicitly connected, we are told, to the rumbling process of “Entlichtung” and to the skeptical quest of men in a post-metaphysical era. As such Under Mournful Horizons is duly sombre, though not overly gloomy. Dark ambience, certainly, is the order of the day, albeit one of a deep and tremulous aspect. The album resides in a half-light nether-zone of loop decay, haunted by Blache’s piano spectres and Nimh’s voice-wraiths. You’ll find little of the harshness of the industrial areas potentially invoked by Polish label Rage in Eden with its specialism in ‘dark ambient / neofolk / industrial / experimental / militaria,’ and its War Office Propaganda past. It deals more in quietly storm-wracked sonatas and neo-classical pianistics under a holy ritual, art work and titles making mournful intent transparent, though some dim light or small glimmer does penetrate now and then through its tenebrous nebulae. Some specifics: “Frozen Gleams Of Eternity” hosts a widescreen tonemass imbued with a (g)rainy fuzz within which an off-kilter motif plays upon the ear in timbrally tweaked recursions, “Surrounded By A Moonless Night” brings faint echoes of monastic choirs, while “In The Court Of A Sorrowful Season” sussurates with speech of uncertain provenance.
Overall, the pairing prove to be deft exponents of the dark-ambient-arts, evoking a panoply of ruined cathedrals, barren wilderness, haunted factories, ominous presences, arcane rituals and monastics, though, gratifyingly, there’s none of the cartoon goth-horrorism sometimes disfiguring the genre. With sorrow phasers set to stun, the pair recall kindred miserabilist spirits such as Desiderii Marginis, with some servings from a less gristly Cold Meat table adjacent to Raison d’Etre and Atrium Carceri. This is not a place to look for serenity or quietude, as the two grimly conjoin their respective musical arts in a paean to sadness and melancholy, the rain falling unrelenting, plangent piano drenched in despair and desolation. These seemingly forlorn funerals are, though, not dispirited, but charged with intent, directed towards the search for spiritual truth—as Monsieur Blache would have it, ‘the everlasting power of ancient time which saves us from the amnesia of everyday life.’
Under Mournful Horizons is available now on Rage in Eden, physical or download.
