Θ (Theta) — Vision Of One

Vision Of One is the fourteenth full-length album from Θ (Theta) aka Greek now living in Norway Themistoklis Altintzoglou. The sound on this five-track album slips between the gaps of drone, manipulated environmental field recordings, ambience, and low-key noise/ industrial texturing- to create a highly atmospheric, at times mysterious album which at its best feels akin to a darker, beat-less and hazed take on the type of thing Future Sounds Of London were doing with albums like Lifeforms & Dead Cities

The CD comes presented in a grey and dull silver  inked card mini gatefold- this features barren mountainscapes, grey skied backed stark tree branches and a murky line of monolithic rectangles. All offer up a low key if effective enough bit of packaging for the sonics within.

We open with one of the album's highlights- the just over eleven and a half minutes of “Left At The Desolate Peak”- this is a subtle painted audio picture which is rich in unease, and starkly moody in its unfold. The track brings together a skillfully blended mix of wind buffet and bay, tautly jittering static texturing, slow tolling bleakness, sliding and shifting tonal slices, and brooding crinkle ‘n’ crack detail.
Directly after this, we have just over seven and a half minutes of “Where A 1000 Hands Point”- this ties together a forlorn ambient string simmer, with sliding and lightly grating textual elements and a general feeling of unease/ faded grandeur. It’s ok, though maybe feels a bit too close to sounding like Raison D'être track.
After this we have “Solving Dead Mist” which comes in eight thirty-five- and opens with distant shadowy footsteps, adding in steadily tolling and doomy piano keys, brooding tone twists and swirl, gothic birdcall.  Finally, we have “Fire From Ashes Redeemed” here find coldly cascading and striking tone dramatics, forebodingly drone hovers, distant and eerier machine-like knocks ‘n’ tolls, and creepy textural cracks.

Vision Of One nicely sits between genre labels to create a selection of keen and subtle detailed sonic pictures, that tell of distant places touched by expansive unease, hovering darkness, and faded grandeur.