Overall, All Roads Lead Home is 35 minutes of pluvial drones replete with soft white/grey noise and sotto voce spoken word possess a mesmeric quality that transcends the reductive description herein.
Pluvial drones replete with soft white/grey noise
In early 2021 the pandemic’s depredations claimed another victim in Cesar Alexandre, Rio DroneMeister, who sadly succumbed to COVID-related ‘complications.’ Just as his family, among those bereft are us—adepts of his Mount Shrine, documented on Igloo here and here, drawn in by a self-deprecating byline—‘ambient and vaporwave artist inspired by rain, lonely nights and some other useless things in between’–and a signature sound from dark ambient/drone’s less gloomy chambers pursued over a series of works, notably for Cryo Chamber (Winter Restlessness, Ghosts on Broken Pavement, Shortwave Ruins), whose curator, Simon Heath, is behind the finishing of All Roads Lead Home, his very last album.
Overall, its 35 minutes of pluvial drones replete with soft white/grey noise and sotto voce spoken word possess a mesmeric quality that transcends the reductive description herein. Tracks 1-3 are each dedicated to a particular type of locale. “Foliage Floor”—kinetic sound waves and chthonic substrata, tones gradually seeming to reach towards the Cosmic. “Peaking Cold”—echoing patterns over bristling drones and ebb-flow synth chords, elements that form a loose melody building at a tectonic pace. A smoldering crepitus signals “Forest Fire,” further colonized by spoken word infusions and sundry environmentalia. The final (title) track is a hazy affair awash in drizzly drones, crawling with sculpted static and spectral babble, with distinct tones oscillating in parallel at varying velocities enhancing density. The ambience of this finale is possessed of a depth of particulate detail rewarding repeat listening at varying volumes.
A Mount Shrine piece, for this listener, is typically attended by a certain feeling—a remote relative of sadness, or something like. This may be projection, analogous to a tragic episode made material in the mind of a false memory sufferer; but, ‘real’ or otherwise, that his work is so suggestive as to act as canvas for such projection is testament to its creator’s subtle expressive power. It makes for a fitting memorial to Cesar Alexandre. R.I.P. (with grey drizzly background hum…)
All Roads Lead Home is available on Cryo Chamber [Bandcamp]
