Makunouchi Bento – Drowned In Bodrog (2020)

Cinemaude

• Neoclassical 
• Electronic music 
• Fantasy 
• Art music 
• Conceptual 
• Post-classical 
• Post-industrial

Makunouchi Bento, a duo from Romania (Felix Petrescu, and Valentin Toma) has issued a sequel to their previous release Ghostophonia. Musically the case is quite similar drenched with high-pitched and slowed-down synth progressions which by their nature and emotive side are ominous and eerie. Slight difference comes in by exploiting more Fantasy-filled motives and gravity-free electronics as if some puckish fairies using one's toilet room. It could have happened but this bunch of tight classical and electronics mixed issue plays tricks on one's mind. Where's the truth, where are fake sounds? As once said a little girl about 5 years old to me she does not believe that we exist at all. That's I believe in because all what we can do we can define themselves through the past, a temporal dimension which does not exist anymore. Because of that all is dream altogether, all is non-existence ultimately. There is no difference between life and death. As Ghostophonia this 9-notch outing is a part of the little discography of Cinemaude.

Silent Strike x Makunouchi Bento – Winds Veiled In Darkness (2020)

  

Cinemaude

• Electronic music 
• Experimentalism 
• Art music 
• Avant-garde 
• Oldie music 
• Hauntology 
• Sampledelic 
• Conceptual 
• Dark ambient

Comment: this 13-track outing is a collaboration between two Romanian artists one of them is a duo called Makunouchi Bento may be (well-) known to visitors at RMH. Getting inspiration from the invisible and mysterious they have managed to reassemble ghostly shades and hyper-realistic flickers with the assistance of more or less traditional sounds. The heart of the release is a series of wax cylinders recorded by Béla Bartók approximately the century ago, capturing the folk music of Banat, Romania. In fact, either by listening to an example of oldie music or getting an axial sample into a contemporary composition like the compositions of The Caretaker and The Fucked Up Beat have verified so far such sort of music is thoroughly haunting and mysterious to a contemporary human being it may be even more spectral than a deliberately manipulated dark ambient composition used to be. Even if you are listening to the songs of then absolute pop stars like Al Jolson you may feel a shiver coming through your heart and down your body. Similarly something like that one can feel listening to Ghostophonia where the artists have left enough air and space between the oldie samples and more or less warped sonic bits to let microscopic melodies and tiny harmonies appear and accentuate the apex of past times and inevitably the touch of death into one's mind to be come. If it comes to one's mind the more it seems to be amplified through bittersweet remembrance and feeling of immediate passing of time. If to compare this issue to Makunouchi Bento's previous issues (I am very aware of a collaborative tenure by Silent Strike though) Ghostophonia seems to be sonically less layered and more linear, as already mentioned, to get hold of feeling of our temporary residence and finalisation of the inevitable arrangement by Lord (Heaven knows we will be dust as Mozza sang 35-36 years ago at the time of his tenure with the Smiths). Would you like to fight back? You're welcome by following the formula – ars longa, vita brevis. So follow the logic of the artists to become immortal. For the reviewer here it is the first notch from the new decade to be truly worthwhile.