Artist: House of Low Culture
Album: Edward's Lament
Year: 2003
Line-up: Aaron Turner, Jeff Caxide &
Luke Scarola
Label: Neurot Recordings
”We're beyond mass and
matter here, beyond even energy. What we're back to is the first
thought”.
Eddie
Jessup in Altered States
House of Low Culture is a side project
of Aaron Turner who is known best from playing the guitar and
providing vocals in the famous post-rock/sludge metal group called
Isis. In House of Low Culture Turner focuses his creative energy on
exploring the possibilities of ambient and drone music. Edward's
Lament is the third release from the project and here Turner is
joined by one of his fellow band members from Isis, Jeff Caxide and
Luke Scarola from Old Man Gloom, another metal band of Turner.
On this album ,Turner has ventured
forth in to more experimental fields of music. Normally, Edward's
Lament is categorised as dark ambient and drone. One could sum up the
dark ambient genre briefly by describing it as a subgenre of ambient
music which focuses on gloomy, ominous and oppressive atmospheres and
soundscapes. Usually lacking the basic pillars of western music
(melody, harmony and rhythm) dark ambient artist face a difficult
task when trying to compose appealing music to capture the listeners'
imagination and attention for the whole album's worth. Here Turner
takes on an additional challenge: making a dark ambient concept
album. The concept here revolves around a 1980 science ficiton-horror
film by Ken Russell called Altered States. The synopsis of the movie
is as follows: A researcher Eddie Jessup believes that the altered
states of consciousness are as real as the everyday reality. Jessup,
as the guinea pig himself, researches those states in sensory
deprivation isolation tanks while under the influence of psychoactive
drugs. Edward's Lament tries capture the explorations of Eddie Jessup
through sound. It is debatable whether or not the term 'music' is
appropriate here since the material here is on the limits between
music and pure sound and noise. The album consists mostly from
various soundscapes of numerous different whistlings, hissings,
buzzing, beeps and pulsating drones. Every now and then few
distinguishable guitars are thrown in to the mix.
Needless to say, this album is rather
difficult to listen. The album is a long collage of ambient
soundscapes which build around between almost unnoticable textures
and details. While the actual movie has its' flaws, it is still very
intriguing on both visual and idea level. No doubt the movie
experience will fuel the listener's imagination to dive deeper in to
the emotional core of this album. It requires the full, undivided
attention of the listener to fully appreciate and catch all the
nuances of Edward's Lament and it should be experienced as the
experiments of Eddie Jessup: in a dark room with the headphones with
as little outside distractions as possible. Take a trip to your inner
self through music.
Written
by Παναγιωτιης
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