Alocer Christus — Alocer Christus
Alocer Christus is a project from the often unsettling & intense Us noise-maker/psycho ambient artists Christopher Ropes- who is most known for Nighttime In The Abyss, a project that creates a nightmarish, original & distribing mix of blacked noise, power electronics, disturbing spoken word, black metal, and dark ambience.
The release to hand finds Ropes pare right back his normally overloaded & frankly terrifying soundscapes to much more stripped back & sparse ambience. This two disc releases presents the listener with two hour long tracks, and each of these focus in on stretched out maps of ambient drift , drone hovers, and melted yet very slightly seared tone simmers.
These two length tracks were sourced from very personal & tragic origins- taking in recordings of Ropes ex-girl friend (who he lived with for five years though she sadly ended up committing suicide,) and his pet bird (who also died). On each track he stretchers the source material out to such a unrecognisable point where they become slurred & dully shrieking expanse of smeared sound.
Over the last four or so months I have returned to this release again & again, playing at different times of day/ night, and in different moods. But I’m afraid to say it does little or nothing for me- sure I can understand & appreciate what Ropes is trying to get at here, but for me it just felt rather shapeless, uninvolving & overtly melted mesh of ambience, which really had little or no effect on me.
I really did try to get & enjoy this release as I have very much enjoyed( and been troubled) by his Nighttime In The Abyss work, but I’m afraid it just didn’t work for me. That said clearly there is a lot of emotion & pain tyed up in this work, so that’s not to say it wont work for you, and if you enjoy troubled & slurred ambience this could do something for you.