Culver & Haare — Invisible Death

Invisible Death is a C50 collab that brings together respected UK noise drone maker Culver, with Haare a Finnish power industrial noise project. This is the second time the pair have collaborated, the first being 2007’s Rusted Zombie Mist. And as you’d expect with such a pairing this four-track release sits nicely between uneasy drone and washed-out/ creepy noise scaping.

The release appears on Portugal’s Narcolepsia- with the purple shelled cassette featuring black printing on one side, and this comes presented in a pro-printed/ double-sided sleeve that features a ghoulish eye-catching image of a skull spurting out a purple, pink, and yellow haze. The release had a pressing of fifty copies, and as of writing there are still copies left- head here to pick up copy up.

Up first we have title track- this around fifteen-minute track opens with a blend of fading in dark ambient sweep ‘n’ abyss droning- this is pocked mark by darting-to-sustained noise texturing. As we move into the track the ambience (which now includes almost church organ simmer) and noise elements start to blend and swim together, creating a wonderful surreal feeling of shift nightmarish unease. The noise elements are kept at the same level as the ambient/ drone elements in the mix- creating a shifting and murky sonic soup. By around the fifth minute we have some effective death industrial-like tone reverbed elements/ forking pitch shifts coming into play, which really nice amps up the feeling of growing and nightmarish malevolence. 
Second, up on side A we have the just shy of ten worth of “Celestial Epidemic”- and here we open with a mixed of grimy churning drone hover, distant tonally reeling, and pressing dread-filled simmering. This all creates a great feeling of pressing and tangible ghoulishness as if the air/ atmosphere from within an airless, decaying, and creepy tomb has been distilled into audio form. As we on the looping almost church organ-like tones, start to blur/ run into each other all creating this feeling of suffocating darkness- around the fifth-minute mark we get stark and chiming tone hits added in- these are either barren guitar hits reverbed/ spread out, or tolling-then-let grimily echo keyboard hits. 

Flipping over and side B kicks off with wonderfully named “Spores From Beyond The Stars”- this ten-minute track finds a darkly hazed mixture of grimly spinning drone loops, reverbed-yet-blunt feedback drifts, and growing ‘n’ bouncing noise harmonics, which are knee-deep in unease and ancient galactic horror. 
Lastly on side B, we have “Carved Hollow(Does Not Mean Cleansed)”- this eleven-piece feels a lot more tripped out/ hazed than any of the other tracks here, as we find a muffled blend of revolving feedback swirls ‘n’ bangs, distant creepy organ droning, and bouncing feedback trails. As the track moves along we get these slowly forking and unease tone harmonics drifting like the smell of death on a mist night. I enjoy the densely pressing, yet grimly hazed feel of this track, and the more you try to grasp its structure/ flow, the more it seems to blur/ haze.

If you enjoy where drone and noise hazily blend into a darkly ghoulish-at-times bleakly psychedelic mass, you’ll very much enjoy what Invisible Death has to offer. I’ll certainly be seeing if I can track down the first collab these two did and look forward to hear more collaborations from them in the future.