Funerary Call — Fragments From The Aethyr
The album finds Vancouver based Harlow MacFarlane (aka Mr Funerary Call), being joined by violinist & noise maker Lashen Orendorff, guitarist Shawn Hache(of Canadian death/ black metal band Mitochondrion), and Vancouver based Electro acoustic/ambient artists' Ross Birdwise (of Ejaculation Death Rattle)- who offers up throat singing on the last track. MacFarlane himself adds to the mix: percussion & kettle drum doomed bombardments, eerier Flute & Horn drifts, and blackly seared & creepy electronics.
The three track album opens with the just over eleven minutes of “Libation” which start with a rumbling mix of kettle drum brood, rising violin shrillness, and doomed & cold guitar scraping. By around the 4th minute blackly roast electronic noise texturing is added to the track, and things turn particularly nasty, searing & brutally malevolent…yet it never falls into all out noise. Around the 7th minute things die back again leaving just the tolling cold guitar work of Hache & MacFarlan’s dark ‘n’ chilling yet subdued ambient textures.
Next is the just eighteen & a half minutes of “Fragments”, and this starts out with a mixture of doomed croaking ‘n’ churning electronics, sudden rumbles of kettle drums, & waves creepy male vocalising, along with fragments of reverb & scuttling guitar textures, and malevolent violin saw. It all creates a very nightmarish & darkly surreal sound scape that summons up images dark occult rituals seen through an LSD seared mind. By the 8th minute the track has taken on a slow build doomed procession structure with wavering dark organ rises, scuttling guitar, and slow swoops of sawing violin. By the 13th minute slow rumbling ritual drums have been added along with more layers of mournful /atmospheric sound matter, and it all feels like the ritual is reaching its prime evil crescendo.
Lastly we “Transference From The Void” which comes in at just under the nine & half minute mark. The track starts with warbling ‘n’ croaking horn work, drifting sways of throat singing, subtle & moody percussive/ drum textures, and genreal feeling of drifting occult dread. As the track goes on more wailing & pained vocal textures are added in to the mix & let to bounce around, and these are joined by more guttural & creepy throat singing elements. The track remains drifting & brooding through-out it’s remainder with percussive elements here & there, but they never form any full rhythmic structure- there just here to heighten the atmosphere.
I’ve heard a few of this projects release in the past, and on the whole I found it rewarding if little predictable ritual dark ambience- but “Fragments From The Aethyr” is a whole different kettle of fish, as the album creates a highly captivating atmosphere which sits somewhere between blackened ambience, dark & dissonant modern chamber music, doom & cold guitar scaping, with elements of noise & brooding ritual music too. This a very compelling & re-playable release that will be of interest to anyone who enjoys dark yet un-predictable & atmospheric music