Arktau Eos — Catacomb Resonator
Arktau Eos came to sonic life in 2005, and put out their first two releases in 2006- these came in the form of Scorpion Milk, an ltd CDR that offered up a single forty eight minute slice of building-though-mainly pared back blend of brooding drones, creepy male incantations, and subtle ritual elements. And Mirrorion- their less ltd debut album, which was a truly unsettling, fairly varied & wholly captivating 70-minute journey into pitch black ritual ambience- bringing together organic ambience, unsettling ritual & elemental field recordings, and chanted-to-darkly-ceremonial voices. Mirrorion really got me fascinated & hooked on the Aural Hypnox label/ collective that Arktau Eos are part of, and it still remains one of my favorite dark ritual albums- Scorpion Milk was ok, and a nice addition to Mirrorion- as it was originally released with the early Ltd editions of the album. But personally, I felt it lacked the Labyrinth like detail & depth of Mirrorion. Catacomb Resonator is very much following the more simplistic & less complex feel of Scorpion Milk, and is just a single thirty seven minute track…so how much you like/ enjoy this is down to what you want from the project.
Unsurprisingly when I first heard Catacomb Resonator I felt a little underwhelmed & shortchanged, after waiting for over five years. But I’ve persevered with it, and while it’s still not as timeless or captivating as Mirrorion, or even as rewarding their last release 2012’s Ioh-Maera. It’s not bad a single track slice of dark ritual ambience that slow ebbs, buildings and grows over its length.
The tracks first half is built around a growing-then-receding blend of what sounds-like effects stretched deep ritual chants, shimmering & stretching ambience, and possible some subtle synth bound texturing. This part of the track has quite a swirling & ill-defined feel to it, as if your trying to fully comprehend a strange ceremonial, that’s either been performed in half light or within plums of dense black smoke.
At around the eighteenth minute everything completely pares back to near silence- then out of the darkened silence we get sudden unsettling drifts & slow pulls of brooding & doomed synth tone- around this the ritual voices have return, but now they seem less treated, been more slurred, and mournful- almost sounding like a gathering of spirits with-in some vast underground cavern. This part of the track is really very creepy & chill-inducing, and if you close your eyes you can almost see an amassed collection of mouths breathing out their body heating into the dank darkness.
By around the twenty-sixth minute, the more deep & ugly synth stretches have departed, and we’re left with a slowly stirring sonic brew of ritual vocalizing, eerier ringing & stretching ambience, with slight hints of deep & darker under drone. Again as we move on the structure of the track starts to return to a more ebbing & swirling feel again, and in its last five minutes it really starts to move between shimmering sustains, and slowly paring & fading back.
As we’ve come to expect from Aural Hypnox releases we get a nice darkly arty presentation, which of course enhances the feel of dark ritual & occult bound connections. The release came in three different editions- a CD in a 7-inch black card folder, a vinyl version in a black card sleeve, or a box set that featured the CD & Vinyl- as well as a cassette, a print, and a grey bag with the projects black screen printed logo. I’m reviewing the CD version. And this features a black card foldout folder- which features red & grey screen printed inks- on the front cover we get an entrance to a cave-like design. And then inside we get red texts, and on the last side a stuck-on fold-out of off-white booklet with red ink.
In conclusion Catacomb Resonator certainly didn’t have the same impact on me as some of Arktau Eos work. But as pared-back-yet- building excise in ritual ambiance & dread it’s not half bad. If you’re a long time fan of the project, or any of the Aural Hypnox projects- I’d certainly say you need to have this. Just go into it expecting it to grow on you, and don’t have too many expectations & I think you’ll get something from the release.