Agnivolok — Sculptor

Sculptor is Agnivolok first album from 2002, here it's reissued & repackaged in a nice fold out black card package with silver and gold print by Eastern front.Were Agnivolok Cherries album mixed together Russian music, ambient and folk. Sculptor concentrates more on ambient, experimental and more difficult elements of their sound.This is also somewhat darker and wrong sounding,weaving almost doom like textures in places of the album. There’s little of the wintery hope of Cherries here, but that doesn’t make it a less album, just a little more difficult and challenging.

The voice of Vera Agnivolok appears less here too and when it does she seems for the most part deep in despair, almost drowned by the slow moving sound elements- as if all passion and lust for live is drained. Noise and sound elements are let to weep in and corrode the songs, giving them a almost watery feel, or like looking at the world through the bottom of thick glass bottle. The album also features one of their longest and more avant gard sound based tracks, with the near 25 minute exit track Penance. The track starts with dreary and slow black cello sawing tones, with a deep droning backdrop. It feels like watching beautiful flowers dieing, their once colourful petals blackened, their storks bending and breaking. This is grim, dark and difficult sound world. Though as it develops it becomes less crude and sinisterly grimy, the cello almost moving towards a melodic drone, but never quite getting there. It never loses the feeling of been very corrupted and tainted, almost having a strangle surreal dark quality with the depths of different tones; going from deep sawing to death sighs, to strange percussive ritual tinkingling, to dead children music box dread.

An album of strange, dark, and ugly depths, where beauty is bent and twisted out of form.This is not advised for virgins of the band, start with Cherries and then work towards this dark turmoil and sadness made audio.To buy ect and play samples ect go to here.