Crowns in the Rain – Ashes from the Past (2018)

Hortus Conclusus

Bandcamp

• Post-rock 
• Art rock 
• Experimental rock 
• Avant-rock 
• Epic 
• Live

Comment: this bunch of 11 compositions comes neither from The United States of America, Great Britain, Canada nor any other outstanding post-rock countries but instead of it an Iranian quintet is behind this masterpiece. Fortunately the music (and recent double album embracing a couple of recuperative live performances as well) is not succumbed to the sanctions (much thanks to Italian imprint Hortus Conclusus). The nucleus of these long-running tracks is based on slow picturesque developments as if depicting a full-fledged autumn full of bright colours and contrast between warmth and chill. And if there is the autumn around there is also some sort of purgative sadness around. The purpose of post-rock, I mean the main branch of it, consisting of massive guitar-induced sound masses and flirtation with eargasmic crescendos, has rarely had to deal with sonic alchemy on its own. It's purpose has been to provide tour de forces, it is like achieving happiness as a process comprising movement from one point to the next one and so on until once one will feel nirvana and absence of suffer in his/her mind and spirit. Yet clarified sadness and light melancholy may be important premises in achieving ennobling happy sensations. Technically post-rock is a multifaceted genre where one can perceive rolling and orchestrated guitars, bold bass lines and rumbling drums to create new ways to fasten and sometime start destroying and rebuilding them. In some ways it is a sort of polyphonic music where instruments are played and modified in their own way yet all the stuff ultimately will constitute a sublime coherent whole even though all of that may run at different speeds at a time. Additionally to happiness as mentioned already above beauty as a phenomenon either seems to be a compound one – one beatific sensation is magnified by another until one can consider it to be overwhelming. It can freely be discerned in music, probably at most. This is an enchanting pickup by including many layers emotively and artistically.

Globoscuro – 3+3+3 (2018)

Hortus Conclusus

• Post-industrial 
• Avant-garde 
• Acousmatic music 
• Experimentalism 
• Conceptual 
• Psycho-acoustic 
• Electro-acoustic 
• Art music

Comment: the Italian musician Globobscuro has been around for a while with his stunning industrial and experimental sounds to provide an alternative point of view about music and life in general. Emiliano Pietrini's recent work of a couple of tracks is inspired about semi-mythological philosopher Pythagoras and his fancy against the number 3. Additionally, Pythagoras did live in Syracuse, Sicily (recently a part of Italy). Musically it is highly arousing due to vociferous guitar noises, elliptic patterns of tape manipulation, hazy electro-acoustic litters at bottom and ennobling atmospheric hovers in between. Even if the guitars are the most prominent element within the whole it is not about rock music at all because the instruments are not treated in that way. On the other side, it is really beautiful in a rare sense of this term. Beauty is not a thing on its own it is a fertile and organic relation between the aforementioned characteristics even if they are uncanny, provoking and destructive. I like the industrial musicians because they used to be honest because of having no urge to provide aesthetical and economic compromises. Instead of it they have been providing measures to undermine general models and instructions with ultimate intention to liberate the energy of sole parts. The outing is a bit in the discography of Hortus Conclusus. And the cover print is amusing and deep at the same time.

Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt & Jochen Arbeit – Guitar Solos (2017)

Hortus Conclusus

• Drone 
• Avant-garde 
• Experimentalism 
• Improvised music 
• Microtonal 
• Guitar ambient 
• Lo-fi 
• Sound art 
• Minimalism 
• Abstract

Comment: as I see Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt likes to create guitar solos in liaison with other musicians. With regard to these split releases he has collaborated with such artists as Hopek Quirin, Martin Neuhold, and Jochen Arbeit. Chronologically Chicago, the US-born musician's collaboration with the latter named musician was the earliest one based on live recorded guitar manipulations. Undoubtedly such sort of music one cannot hear at a gig by Guns'n'Roses in the embodiment of Slash, and Duff McKagan, for example. Rather one might think of it as not being a guitar-based music at all because all the chords are heavily treated and mutilated. It is an absolutely different (parallel) universe with regard to the legends. It conjures up a fantasy loaded world as if the dwelling place for many horrendous supernatural creatures. It chimes like two metallic surfaces were rubbed against each other in a reverberant room (regarding the track by Jochen Arbeit). However, there is a major difference between the two 15-minute compositions. Jochen Arbeit's work is clean and clear-cut with bass loaded delays and echoes and sometimes employing hisses to be switched on and off. Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt's track, the aforementioned one to evoke ghosts in lobit and lo-fi manner. As if a stoned die-hard lo-fi enthusiast were played his own obtuse psychic shards. It reminds me of some of the most rejective moments by Johnny Crewdson, and his combo The Hirundu being created sometime in the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s. It also resembles my own very first music experiments due to have exploited different sort of artifacts and primitive instruments and tape manipulation in a maniac way. In fact, all the course is highly attractive. The spellbinding release is a part of the discography of Hortus Conclusus.

TT-ram & Lutz Thuns – Hypnosis (2017)

Hortus Conclusus

Bandcamp

Bandcamp

• Ambient 
• Ambient drone 
• Microtonal 
• Dark ambient 
• Neoclassical 
• Electronic music 
• Avant-garde 
• Experimentalism 
• Minimalism 
• Epic 
• Soundscape

Comment: this set of 6 compositions used to drift somewhere between spirituality and ambient music imbued with flickering ghosts, and shadows reflecting walls and murky memories from the past of having a weaker impact due to passing the time. As if one walked in a surreal grayish world surrounded by gigantic trees and silence. And one would meet no living substance while walking on. Yet one is filled with the expectation of something is going to happen soon or you are waiting for someone. In fact, I have experienced such a sort of dream and by my opinion it would be the description of afterlife. Musically it is a perfect accompaniment and stimulus of your thoughts and desires reflecting upon divine world. Majestic, cathedral/catacombs/monastery drenched ambiances used to develop slowly being backed up by minimal rhythms, and coagulated sonic effects hanging either atop or in front of. It may be only the track called Brainstorming gives you a "false" impression about the direction of the whole outing because there is up the strong shuffle of galvanized rhythms. In overall, it is a blissful and frightening world simultaneously. It is also an excellent example of how minimally managed music can be emotionally highly overwhelming. By kindred souls I recommend listen to the aesthetic of such an Italian ambient juggernaut as Alie Die, and also the music of Globobscuro. Simply the greatest in its minimal magic realism. The collaborative issue (between German Lutz Thuns, and French artist TT-ram) is a part of the discography of Hortus Conclusus.