(01.19.06) It’s been interesting to watch Mathis Mootz’s evolution over the last
few Squaremeter records: working through Middle Eastern beats, spoken
word renderings of The Silmarillion and quasar dub music.
The Frozen Spark is a further evolution, taking Mootz inward.
This is a soundtrack to dark places, a cardiogenic pulse which
reverberates through the grosser tissue in the unlight corners of your
thorax.
Mootz builds slowly simmering tracks out of singular elements,
allowing them space to reverberate and decay into microscopic
granularity. “White Breach” is composed of the elongated shriek of a
dying bird, the echo of a gunshot in a wind tunnel, the distant thrum
of magma eruptions and the shivering echo of distorted flamenco guitar
(looped back at 1/100 speed). “Second Angle” shivers with the snick
of steel, groans with a choir of ghostly voices and shudders with the
hammer of distant pile drivers in a space of inpenetrable darkness.
Vast electrical storms hover in the distance in “Diffraction” while
electric piano chords tintinnabulate over the distant thunder-phonics.
“Gazed Reflection” is filled with the mighty exhalation of ancient
dragons, steam clouds which descend upon a frightened city that is
trying to ward off a sky black with these beasts by ringing every bell
they can. It’s all for naught and “Reanimation Limit” is the dirge of
the decimated civilization, burned to the ground. A wave of amplified
cellos drifts across the ruined city scape while the wordless cry of
vaporized citizens cry out for their fallen heroes.
This is the music of the Fall, the endless descent down onto the
burning lake where the only stars are those spirits falling with you.
A bleak offspring of Lustmord’s Paradise Disowned and Benny
Nilsen’s Morthound release The Goddess Who Could Make The Ugly
World Beautiful, The Frozen Spark captures light and
squeezes it, compressing it into a black echo which smears itself
across the world.
The Frozen Spark is out now on Ant-Zen.
