Taphephobia - Blue Hour [Cyclic Law - 2020]Taphephobia is the brainchild of Norwegian musician Ketil Søraker ( also Aural Whiteout, Mulm, Ex-Northaunt, A Cryo Chamber Collaboration) For his project, Ketil focuses is largely dark ambient- it's first album House of Memories appeared in 2007, and in 13 years of its activity- the project has released eight full-length albums and seven split albums. The latest album to date, Blue Hour, was released by the German label Cyclic Law, like several of the projects previous albums. It was released as either a four-panel Digipack CD, or digitally. The album cover is a blue-tinted photograph of a seascape. In the foreground, there is a calm surface of the water, and in the distance a rocky coast shrouded in fog is visible. Against the background of the sky, there is a stylized diagram of the phases of an eclipse of the sun or moon, which is something like a logo or sign for the project. Below, against the background of the water, is the name of the project, made in a simple white script, with rather large spacing between letters. Just below is the album's title in a white handwritten font. Despite its obvious minimalism and a noticeable lack of fresh ideas, the cover has a wonderful atmosphere of something extraterrestrial and mystical. This is a classic Ambient cover style, and fits well with the musical part of the album.
The album runs for around forty-six minutes and consists of eight compositions of different lengths. Blue Hour is a very atmospheric Drone Ambient with a fairly strong dark side, based on keyboards. The listener is immersed in an enveloping sound atmosphere, consisting of sonic streams flowing from each other and intertwining with each other. Light and airy keys can coexist with darker scores, creating a changeable mood. Occasionally, there are near-noise moments, made, perhaps with the help of samples or field recordings. It also seemed to me that in some compositions there are slight hints of the presence of human voices. All of this is lavishly handled with a lot of delays, reverbs and other effects. Despite the obvious improvisation, compositionality is noticeable in the tracks. This is why most compositions that are fairly short in length for a given style of music do not look like unfinished parts or excerpts from something larger. It is worth saying that the mood of the music changes throughout the album. It all starts with rather sublime and light atmospheric compositions. But towards the end of the album, the atmosphere thickens and quite a lot of darkness and tension accumulates in the sound.
If the first part of the album felt like ambient in the style of, for example, Vidna Obmana, then the second part returns the listener to the dark droning ambient, more familiar to Taphephobia. I think that drawing parallels with some other projects does not make sense, since every listener will find something on this album that will remind him of the work of other musicians. Blue Hour, while not an indisputable masterpiece, is still a pretty pleasant piece of ambient that is good for background or in an individual thoughtful listening. This is a meditative and atmospheric album that, I am sure, will appeal to many fans of the genre. Sergey Pakhomov
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