Arne Deforce & Mika Vainio — Hephaestus
This isn't far outside of what I've heard from Vainio in the past, for example on his doom metal derived "Life... It Eats You Up". While I enjoy his minimalist, chasm invoking note choices, I didn't enjoy that album, and I don't enjoy most of this one, because the tone of his instrument is off balance, seemingly designed to cause more pain than pleasure - that, or designed by a partially deaf person who can no longer hear the shrill high end frequencies.
The treble pierces like a blade, and there is no warmth to the sound; Vainio seems to revel in its disconnected digital coldness. Some of Pan Sonic's works had a similar lack of warmth and life, but were usually saved by the microdetails of the drum programming and EQ, things that do not exist in the murky improvisational world of this album, where no rhythmic sounds are found, only an undulating wisp of ambience becoming a roar of noise.
The noise does subside for most of tracks 2 and 3, and I do enjoy the quiet 'dark ambient' or 'deep listening' moments significantly more than the dronoise sections, but ultimately I resent the way I'm encouraged to turn up the volume only to be blasted with high frequency shrieks - something Vainio has always been fond of. This is a largely ambient album that one simply cannot put on in the background; it will shatter your sense of contemplation and force you to adjust the volume many times. As a result, I am reluctant to brood along with it through long periods of subtlely layered uneventfulness.
The first moment of the album that I genuinely enjoy isn't until the 4th of the 6 tracks, "Styx (river of rage)", which sounds like a lurching motor of a huge saw finding great difficulty in getting started. It is indeed ironic that this is the most pleasant sound texture to be found on the entire recording. The bassy roundness of the sound has a glowing guitar amplifier quality that couples nicely with the cello. Later in the track, thunderous taps, claps and booms imitate the sound of distant explosions.
The final "Elysium" is also a good track, with a more open and inviting sonic space than the rest of the album. It has a rumbling repeating element that anchors a slow glacial pulse to the track. The album ends with a distant vein of pleasant chorused feedback that sounds rather melodic; if only we'd had a little more of that sound.
In general, I have difficulty with the pleasureless, cold groundlessness of Vainio's solo work, particularly when it veers into ear-lacerating digital noise territory moments after being breathlessly quiet for 5+ minutes. This album is not drastically different, and gets a similar reaction from me. I do enjoy a number of albums that sketch similarly ashen, apocalyptic soundscapes, but these have more balanced, expansive production, and a clearer narrative from beginning to end. I'd recommend William Fowler Collins & Gog "Malpais" or some TenHornedBeast, which have a lot more hypnotic ritual progression and personality than the sadistic, meandering coldness of this album. You'd have to be a pretty masochistic listener of music to get anything out of this.