Norman Records have given an 8/10 review to the Bill Horist and Jakob Riis album "The Cessation Elegy"!
Copies are available to buy from Norman Records here :
And here's what they say!
Here's a peculiar CD on which
guitarist Bill Horist of America teams up with sound artist Jakob Riis
of Denmark on laptop and real time processing on a two-act suite of
instrumentals which they confidently declare "a new wordless opera".
Rather good it is too, I'm quite surprised they've only made 100 of
these.
Opening with the Americana-ish twanging of 'Wind, Tar to
Baliene Flame' with only minimal electronic interference does little to
prepare the listener for track two, 'The Hidden Terms of Cessation's
Elegy' on which Riis takes the fore with a grinding, groaning mass of
shuddering dark ambient drones to which Horist adds cosmic feedback
howls and lumpen ringing distorto-chords, then 'Fibrillate' throws us
into a fluttering electronic bleepscape with panicked scratchy guitar
before the next track throws us straight back to the opener's
barely-accompanied guitar soli gracefulness.
And so it goes over the course of the CD, Horist's beautiful
traditional acoustic shapes and more challenging electric
experimentalism battling for dominance against Riis's sonic virus of
scorched-earth dark ambience and robotised dread. It's a challenging and
varied listen which certainly does hint at a soundtrack-esque
narrative, it's bringing all sorts of crazy images into my mind. Don't
listen to it last thing before you go to bed or you'll almost certainly
have nightmares.
