Tenhornedbeast — Ten Horned Moses Descended The Mountain
Each of the three cds comes with its own artwork/ card sleeve that takes in landscape pictures of either woodland scapes or moody skies. The three four colour sleeves are held together by a custom made black art paper band that features grey letterpress printing. The three tracks here are built from purely processed/manipulated guitar drone textures & just two notes, though at times THB mangers to create deeply sinister cello like dwells, darkly expansive synth like dwells, and all manner of brooding/ yet darkly warming drone textures.
Starting off the proceedings on disc one we have “Chose For Your Self The Might Of The Earth” which comes in four minutes over the hour mark. The track starts out with a chilling and subtle piecing drone like billow that slowly comes into sonic view, underneath is this a shimmering almost church organ like sustain. As the track progresses the chilling and piecing first drone layer is subtle added to by more descending, swirling and darkly angular drone currents. Until just before the 10th minute there’s a really feeling of acceleration with-in the track- that makes you feel like it will suddenly explode yet it never does, but instead it shifts down into slighty less pressing & intensifying drone dwells. The rest of the track sees THB building up drone/pitch momentum, then pulling back once to build the anticipation back up again.
Onto disc two & we have the track “Celestial Pathfinder” which comes in at five minutes over the hour mark. This track starts off with a mixture acceleration & descending tones- the accelerating tone is haunting & penetration, while the desending tone sounds like a plane slowly going down and disappearing from view. As the track goes on THB forges the descending & growing drones into an organic & quite mentally (even physically) unbalancing mixture. This track feels like a stripped yet glowing stark take on early sinister & drifting Tangerine Dream, with the drone textures coming across like stretched out doomy string work & churning yet descending drone like analogue synth sustains. This is my favourite of the three parts, as I really like the way THB builds the conflicting drone currents into a truly mind altering effect.
So lastly onto disc number three & we have a track entitled “The True Voice Of God Is Silence”, and this comes in at three minutes over the hour mark. This track starts off sounding almost billowing chant or pagan horn like in it’s rising & penetrating single drone current sustain. As the track moves on THB subtle adds sub-drone wails & ebbs behind the main drone picture to create this eerier yet penetrating ageless feel. Also as the track progresses it seem to be in perpetual fading & thinning mode, like it could completely fade out at any moment yet it never does- the drones somehow manger to glow ‘n’ ebb yet fade at the same time; Though in it’s last few minutes the track does truly fade out.
“Ten Horned Moses Descended The Mountain” is a very lengthy submersion in chilling, ritual, brooding & darkly pagan drone matter. The three part track goes from: organically penetrating, to mind altering unbalancing, to downright creepy ‘n’ un-nerving. All told it’s rewarding & darkly mind expanding experience, my only slight criticism is sometimes the tracks do feel a little too long for there own good, but maybe that’s down to the mood I played them in more than the tracks themselves. Sadly this is now out of print with the label, but I’m sure you’ll be able to track down a copy in any good experimental music web store or shop…well worth a look if you enjoy dark yet penetrating & unbalancing drone matter.