A review from Hard Wired (January 2003)

No expense has been spared with this limited release of 333 copies. The disk itself comes housed in a printed card cover and features 12 tracks in total, all exclusive to this release and mastered by Mika from This Morn’ Omina. To accompany this disc comes a tidy A5 size booklet printed on good quality paper and dedicating a page to each artist with a picture and short (maybe a little too short) description.

The opening page of the booklet states the compilations theme “This project explores magickal and scientifick patterns of chaos” with the passage “Holy art Thou, Chaos, Chaos, Eternity, all contradictions in terms!” a quotation form Aleister Crowley…

Many of the artists present are new to me, but they all pretty much figure within the darkwave / ambient field. It’s been particularly interesting to hear how they have portrayed their chaotic visions into musical form, though I must admit to walking away feeling somewhat baffled after trying to make sense of the reasoning’s behind some of it.

While the two opening tracks by Murderous Vision and Ah Cama-Sotz behold a mysterious flow of dark haunting airiness, Polygon deliver the colder Encoding White, sustaining chilling atmospheres with icy droplet effects. Cotton Ferox’s bizarre sound is very nu-age influenced on Revolt Against The Modern World driven by bass lines, slow drumbeats and fazing electronics with spoken vocal and sampled dialogue. Sator Absentia & No Festival Of Light rely on dark fuzzy noise and spoken dialogue on Upside Down and soon followed by the disturbing Frater by 4th Sign Of The Apocalypse, a ‘good witch / bad witch’ spoken sample is repeated with dark gothic chanting and mashing synthetic effects making it quite an unnerving piece really.

The tracks that really impress me the most are the peaceful On The Outside by Ontario Blue, whose floating atmospheres and the gentle melody make it seem so blissful, likewise so too does This Morn’ Omina, the labels biggest act with the gem Octarine II surrounding you with their dark aura of electronics and enchanting tribal rhythms. One things for sure, this Belgian group has a fine ear for detail.

We return to the dark side again with Dream Into Dust whose piece Field Of Night incorporates more eerie atmospheres, strings and gloomy dead beats. The album closes with the French act O Quam Tristis and Simpliciter, a dark electro Goth track with slow beats, strings, eastern atmospheres and drawn out vocals.

This upcoming label from the Czech Republic should be worth keeping an eye on in future. In all, they’ve provided a neat little product of a very limited run that is bound to quickly sell out. It will certainly raise some mixed views along the way, but those of you with a high regard for dark and tranquil atmospherics can certainly make a good home for this…

Rich Hobbs