The King Is Dead is recognizable, profoundly atmospheric and dreamily ecstatic, with slow, warm and short-form guitar ambient based sound tapestries. A true heart-breaking and magnificent epilogue.
Uncompromising defender of underground electronic music in its pluralistic form (covering a large range of styles, from power electronics, to drone noise ambient, abstract experimentalism and post techno chillout), the legendary Ant-Zen notably released the last Nimon release (aka Keith Baker). With two past substantial materials for Ant-Zen and Hymen Records, Keith Baker already made a name on the international and contemporary ambient dronescaping scene.
This new effort—a dedication to his father’s passing in 2013—is recognizable, profoundly atmospheric and dreamily ecstatic, with slow, warm and short-form guitar ambient based sound tapestries. Gently flowing guitar resonances, echoing minimalist motifs and convoluted electronics envelop this album with a solemn and peacefully emotional shimmer. All tracks follow a parallel implicit objective, to explore and depict with sound colors the gallery of our imagination, personal, cheerful and fragmented waves of memories, the existential vulnerability. From the melancholic and pastoral-hymn like beauty of the first tracks we progressively enter in a vast corpus of noisy ambient excursions and entrancing guitar tricks as in the sublime and utterly lovely “integrity.” Classically wavering ambient textures with dream pop accents are blissfully intertwined to noisy and gauzy cinematic drone blackness as in the superb “These Old Bones.” “Something I’ll Never Forget” and “Internalising An Explosion” express more sculpted, wintery and ethereal synthscaping motifs with an incredibly intense sonorous component. “The End of Days…” closes the album with a serene and hyper spleen like track for long guitar drones and moving melodious vibes.
A true heart-breaking and magnificent epilogue. This album’s stylistic approach is somewhere in between the bluesy, detached and crying guitar laments of Loren Connors, the classy ambient introspective scenery of Christian Fennesz and the softly evanescent dronescapes of Aethenor. A ravishing, intriguing and sensational avant-organic ambient guitar album. First revelation of the year and truly recommended.
The King Is Dead is available on Ant-Zen. [Bandcamp]
