Silence & strength - Opus Paracelsum [The Eastern Frount - 2006]Opus Paracelsum is Silence & strength second full length album which conjures up a mix of dark electronica, ambient ocultic drifts, and all manner of oddly layered, strange & eerier samples. At times it come across like a less sophisticated coil or maybe ambient IDM gone over to the dark side. Oddly it almost brings to mind a less beat driven Board of Canada ala Geogaddi's dark ritual air, with it’s swirling layers of odd dialogue, weird audio editing, effects and foreboding air mixed with slowly uncurling ambience. Though there certainly are a few more hectic moments for the most part it’s fairly calm and mysterious .The album is apparently inspired by life and works of Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, medieval Swiss physician, chemist, alchemist, one of the fathers of modern medicine and rebellious thinker. It does often give the feeling of strange other worldly goings on in cramped Labourites where magic and science are mixed into one and strange contraptions await, which open the gates to other worlds. A rather solid collection of darkly surreal electronics, with many layers of meaning and sound to investigate. Roger Batty
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