Eumourner — ARCANA OF PHYSICS : Panspermia

Here’s a mini-CDR (officially the best format, I declare) from Inner Demons Records, a prolific US label who deal exclusively, I think, in 3” CDRs. The label releases a lot of harsh noise and HNW, and given that ARCANA OF PHYSICS : Panspermia is two tracks amounting to twenty minutes, I suspected eumourner would be static walls. But I was wrong. Eumourner is Francesco La Cava, Gherardo Zauber Pierantoni, and Michele Venturi, utilising percussion, voices, guitars, theremin, bass, field-recording, cut-ups, samples, and effects.  

The first track, ‘ALLAN HILLS 84001’ is just shy of ten minutes in length; it begins with small, kinetic electronic sounds, over a low drone which soon swells in volume and is joined by lines of an ambient, vocal-sounding patch. Underneath there are manipulated ringing sounds and possibly field recordings of waves, again processed and mangled; so there are plenty of noises, but it’s not noisy as such. However, the track is at points forceful, with the drone ebbing and flowing, and builds into a crescendo; after this, there is an effective turn into a slow, shifting dark ambience, with reverberating feedback and slow drones underneath, creating a genuine sense of depth and space. The final section slowly dissipates into heavily processed noises that evoke breathing sounds, before ending abruptly.

‘OUMUAMUA’ is the second piece, and again starts with smaller sounds before more droning elements emerge; here, it’s a combination of small, skittering electronic sounds, clipping noises, and what sounds like a loop of amplifier hum. The drone that arises rides on a large ambient patch sound, perhaps not exactly dark ambient, but darker ambient, and there is that general atmosphere of wind/breath sounds that populates the genre. However, again, this isn’t a simple dark ambient venture by any means - and you should really imagine eumourner as an improvising electronics trio - and a bubbling bass loop rises in the background, that gives a vintage sci-fi feel, akin to the Forbidden Planet soundtrack, for example. Halfway through the track an unexpected element enters: a primitive acid techno loop, or at least it’s in that territory; it’s accompanied by murky, next door scrapings, and whilst initially I felt that the genre-referencing of the ‘techno’ element was an intrusion into an otherwise largely ‘alien’ sound-world, the piece builds in intensity, with the acid squiggles getting higher and higher, and it does achieve a climactic feel.

One of the things I love about mini CDRs is their brevity, but I have to say that in this case I wanted to hear more from eumourner, and I’d like to hear longer pieces from them. That said, the shortness of the tracks - in comparison to a lot of other pieces operating in the same sonic area - compresses and focusses the music, giving it a different feel to more genre-obeying dark ambience. I should again say that the tracks aren’t strictly dark ambient, but they certainly traverse that territory, and it’s the easiest shorthand for describing aspects of the release. However, as the acid squiggles show, this isn’t a simple dronathon, and it’s more akin to electronic improvisations that play with the idea of dark drone without necessarily being either overwhelming dark or droney; eumourner create a good sense of space, movement, and momentum, and I’m keen to hear more.