#c73

NGC 1851, C73 // Ray Blais

A RAVEN AMONG CROWS CHAPTER 73 (AO3) (FF.net) (Wattpad)

Capítulo 73: Orbes violetas

—¿…Eleonora?

El oficial leyó el nombre, su ceño fruncido por la curiosidad. Sin embargo, al momento siguiente, sus ojos se agrandaron horrorizados y su rostro palideció.

—¡Eleonora Asil!

—……

El oficial, que se había dado cuenta de su identidad, se sobresaltó. Los cargos contra Eleonora Asil eran demasiado graves ​​para el jefe de seguridad de Battuanu.

Sonic Picks 12

IZANASZ: SPECTRAL CASCADES (2017)

Reviewed format: Limited Edition C73 Cassette Tape Album on GENOT CENTRE

After all the New Year's celebrations of a few days ago, there was the first packages in the mail again yesterday. One of which included this amazing album from 2017 by IZANASZ titled SPECTRAL CASCADES on Limited Edition C73 Cassette Tape, ordered from the GENOT CENTRE. Fittingly the music contained on this tape is again cinematic (like the aRF mini album attic that I reviewed yesterday) but in a much different way. The Cassette Tape is housed in a classy looking black Norelco Case. The Cassette Tape only features a GENOT CENTRE label sticker on side A but other than that the tape is not customized with colours, the artwork on the J-card inside is rather nice, with the album cover on the first panel, very alien and spacey looking cover artwork that matches the music. The short fold on the back of the J-card features the tracklist and album credits and in the middle panel of the inside of the J-card you can see this cryptic artwork made up of many patterns, looking like a sequence of parameter settings. Also included is a special physical object, a b&w film negative with IZANASZ's portrait by Tereza Bartůňková which is an interesting addition and a nice photo to see when you hold it in the light, cool stuff. The tracklist of the album is spread over the A side and B side in this way: A - TAPESTRIES / MEMORIES OF BROKEN CHARACTER ARMOR, B - ANTICIPATION OF APPARITION / EMILY FUSSELMAN'S RABBIT.

SPECTRAL CASCADES is structured with one short piece on the beginning of each side and much longer pieces following the short piece and in the description of the album on Bandcamp you can find a quite detailed text on the concepts of the album's sound that also mentions the ways IZANASZ uses the sound spectrum in the music, quite a complex and abstract text but it does indeed match the music although my own impressions of listening leaned more towards experiencing the aural equivalent of how my own dreams are in atmosphere and how they progress. It was quite a unique experience to literally hear the sounds on this album that feel like an abstraction of my dreams in the mixture of both recognizable and manipulated samples of voices, instruments, diffuse ambiences and melodies as well as Noise clouds. SPECTRAL CASCADES starts with TAPESTRIES on side A which features distant mysterious music playing in a huge space as well as lo-fi crunchy Industrial drums sounding especially good on the analogue tape format turned up nice and loud. It's hard to explain but this music just does something with my mind that gives me these tense and mysteriously dark imaginary visions that are really enjoyable. It's a bit like being in a cold wet castle or a similar building in a fictional time and witnessing all these strange rituals happening in the brown orange hue of candles. The way the music progresses is also pretty surprising, as in the longer piece IZANASZ uses some pretty extreme dynamics, making some sections very soft and then suddenly creating a fast crescendo and climax to then fall down again in a soft part. In the short pieces the music is much softer and subdued though. Second track on side A MEMORIES OF BROKEN CHARACTER ARMOR segues straight from TAPESTRIES in a continuous tone that then gets overlayed with strange whirring sounds as well as pretty disturbingly manipulated voice samples, pretty dark but interesting as well. This part fades out slowly after several minutes and then pretty sudden one of the Noise infused sections of this album begins which is also combined with a dark metallic glitched slow melody. Pretty intense but also melodic at the same time, it has a very intense and immersive sound to it. This noise also combined with great frequency modulations of the tone. Then follows a quiet section again in which you can hear wind, a strange ghostly choir singing as well as a glassy glitched up organ melody. This crossfades into field recordings of swishing sounds from a place that could be a shop or shopping mall (it's pretty abstract) which gets combined with organlike drones circling around the sound space and moving towards a more noisy diffuse Industrial whishing sound of machinery. The piece that very slowly progresses towards the ending fade out in which the piece is already reduced to only a few quite ambient sonics. This is music that is packed full with details and it changes quite a lot during its 28:30 playing time and it's a very rewarding listen, never dragging the music out. Side B then, starts with the short piece ANTICIPATION OF APPARITION, it's very quiet and features ambient piano melodies, a sitar (?) at the beginning as well as what sounds like a Japanese drum rhythm speeding up. A quiet brooding ambience of mystery as a prologue to the long piece coming up. EMILY FUSSELMAN'S RABBIT is this long piece and this time the music is a bit more focussed around one drone. The track builds up very slowly and quietly from the beginning featuring a lot of hollow ghostly resonant sounds and harmonic resonances from saturation which crossfades into an ambient reverberated melodic pattern on piano as well as various Industrial tinged whishing and "shifting" sounds. Combined with the saturated resonant sound that accompany the melody too the piece builds to the explosive Noise infused climax in which again the melodies can still be heard pretty clearly. It never gets into pure Noise territory, but its combination of the intense and distorted sound and ambiences make the music really powerful and feel huge, which is also helped by the deep reverb of the piece. From its climax the track then fades to lo-fi crunchy distorted fuzzyness and the melodic resonances take over, crackling and fuzzing left and right until they crossfade into the following much more subdued final section. The final section features filtered mysterious ambient resonances, metallic clanging and also notably, the sounds from a female pilot speaking through the passenger communication system in a plane and it gradually strips down to the clanging and subtle atmospheric sounds ending the tape in a rather mysterious way, great stuff.

SPECTRAL CASCADES by IZANASZ is definitely one of the best releases I've listened to and reviewed in 2019 so far. The ever imaginative and deep masterful sound shaping conjurs up rich aural stories and situations and the music has a very original personal sound to it, sounding very spontanous and free in its composition and performance. A strongly recommended excellent release, you definitely got to check this out.