Satøri — The Woods
The Woods is a recent nine-track album from Satøri aka UK’s Dave Kirby. It mixes moody & foreboding synth scaping, with searing ‘n’ fizzing harsh noise & ambient industrial- all topped with moments of shouty to atmospheric vocals. Making for an album that often shifts from the uneasy/ shadowy to the intense/ roasting.
Fitting the album’s title the digipak CD artwork takes in eerier black & white pictures of woodlands- either makeshift lean-to shelters, though dense tree lines, or of creepy-looking wooden cabins.
The album opens with “A Stopped Clock” which brings together bleak synth purr ‘n’ plod, baying reels of noise craft, and whispered to sinisterly altered vocals. There’s “The Summoning” which switches between dark ritual chants & bleak ambience and thickly brooding industrialized sustains.
The second half goes from “Pressing Down” which mixes blackly hovering chants and brooding hoover, with creepy spoken word elements. These are often suddenly overloaded by thick presses of drilling, grinding, and shredding noise tone. With the album playing out with “You Can’t Breath” which sets together an eerier/faint Music box ebb with a slowly slamming industrial tone, industrial percussive runs, and baying/ melt vocal tones.
The Woods is very much an album that is constantly seesawing back and forth between shadowy atmospherics and nerve-flaying noise. All making for a nicely unpredictable ride, which will both creep out & overload its listening.