Somnivore — Clergy of Oneiros

Dictionary time. Somnivore: eater of sleep, if my Latin is correct. And Oneiros—one of the sons of Night in Greek mythology. Sounds to me like we’re in for a tolling, rumbling, cavernous excursion into Lustmørd territory, and we are. But a clone this isn’t: like all good records, the stamp of an individual creator can be heard on each track and in every aspect of the recording. Imagine—or maybe better to say recall—the music that resonates in your inner ear right after you’ve floated up from sleep.

A seductive not-there-but-not-here-either feeling persists across the whole of this disc. The opener, “Somnivore”, overlays an odd percussive scrape on top of a droning, Gregorian chant-style two-note chorus while other, rather organic sounds come and go in the mix: shouting children, faint electronic twitters that bring to mind birdcalls or rushing wind or even human speech. “Debate with the Green Fairy” sports a low, trombone-like melody (maybe something played at half-speed) with whispered-over-the-phone speech drifting in and out.

“Those Graves Under The Bay Of Bothnia” has more reverberant whispering (the more I heard this particular trope on this record, the more I enjoyed it) and what sounds like the thrum of a low-end vibraphone. One common element, which I actually found myself liking a lot, was the way a few tracks seemed to go into a kind of false-stasis, an ending that isn’t really an ending. You peer into the abyss for a bit, and then—surprise!—it peers back out at you.

Expect this album to nag you to come back to it. It’s restful and commanding at the same time, and demands close listening on headphones. I kept feeling like I was missing things, and I was right—in a good way. The only drawback is the relatively short running time: 45 minutes, which in this CD-and-download era is barely an EP. More, please?