Olhon - Sinkhole [Eibon Records - 2006]Sinkhole is a creepy half way house between field recording sound work and dark ambiences. The sound elements were recorded at II Pozzo Del Merro near Rome; it’s the world’s deepest Sink hole at a depth of a recorded -392 meters, but it’s believed to be deeper. The resulting album is a captivating highbred, alive with eerier echoes and sound calls from off in the darkness. Each track is taken from sound element at a different level of the sink hole, so the first track finds us on the Descent, they don’t seem to run in order of depth, which concept wise is a bit of a shame, it would have been interesting to see how the sound altered as you went deeper. Never the less this is, a miner quibble. As for highlights it’s all very constant in its quality- a few track that stood purely for creepy, ‘what the hell is that noise factor’ would be: Groundless which finds us at a depth of -400 meters, the track is taking sounds from the deepest depth here. It’s made up of strange slow breathing sound, and a strange haunting animal like call, it has an eerier aquatic feel, there’s also a un-nerving tapping sound that keeps enter the track as it drifts its way along. Unexploded is build out of eerier, cravenly echoes, and dank air ambience, lots of identifiable audio sound murmurs drift in and out, one of the most chilling is what sounds like a human’s sinister laugh, floating somewhere off in the darkness. How much of the sounds have been played around with in the studio is unclear, but the liner notes claim very little has been done to the sounds. Sinkhole stands as a worthy headphone companion, to investigate the dark abysses with in all of us. This is the projects first release, so it will be interesting to see what they do next.
Roger Batty
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