Jérémie Mathes — Gjöll

“Gjöll“ is a varied & darkly heady collection of  tracks that weave together elements of drone, subtle organic noise  based texturing, subdued ritual elements, field recordings, murky electro- acoustic texturing and doomy ambience. Jérémie Mathes is a French sound artist and this is his second release, his first release was on highly respected ghost ambient label Mystery Seas in 2010.

This cd offers up a collection of five tracks that are  based around Norse mythology, and in particular Gjöll which is English means “Resounding” which Norse mythology is the name of one of the eleven rivers associated with Élivágar (Ice Waves)-which are rivers that existed at the beginning of the world. As one would expect with the subject matter  this is fairly subterranean &  darkly expansive in it’s feel, but the thing that makes this release more appealing than your standard slice of dark ambeince or black drone matter is how vaired, active & creative each track is. Sure this  album stays very much with in the reins of deep ‘n’ dark ambience through-out it’s length,  but Mathes makes a really effort to add in intriguing/creative texturing & sonic elements along the length of every track here-there's no settling in on one ambient texturing, & then sitting on it for ten minutes here. Mathe really puts in a lot of work & thought into each track here. To create his subtle shifting & ebbing dark sound scapes he utilizes all manner of sound source such as: metal door resonances, cymbal, banjo, broken luth with worn out  violin bow, sea shells, various percussive elements, found objects & gloomy field recording textures.

All told this is a very rewarding & sonically detailed collection of darkly tinged ambience & drone matter with creative electro-acoustic elements & eerier mood setting subtle noise texturing elements.