[Reviewed by Peter Marks]
The cover of this record compliments the music perfectly: we’re headed towards something. Something unknown which can only be perceived by contrasting the darkness surrounding it. No lights are visible, even the stars have been put out; its as though whatever lies in wait has been patiently preparing. If you want clues as to what this sounds like, I suggest sitting in a room with all the windows shut and the curtains drawn. Stay there and listen to ‘Ominousium’, motionless, with your eyes open. As the time passes, you will begin to see shapes and forms emerging from the impenetrable shroud surrounding you.
Kave practice an intruiging hybrid of dark ambient and field recording. For every droning wave which breaks across our bow, there is life beneath it. An endless spectacle of translucent, pulsating organisms that shine up through the drowning currents to ghostly effect. They speak softly, intoning their lamentations not through words but images… and there are no shortage of those to be discerned throughout the run of Kave’s jaunt into the netherworlds. The distant chaos of long deserted factories can be felt echoing up and down the shore of Ominousium, a place which much like Coil’s Anarcadia is not a definite location but a mindset or perhaps just a minefield.
This is a land of foreboding, shadowy malice. A realm you come to only in the midst of nightmares, the type which you wish you could wake from but have no chance of escaping until the morning light comes to banish them. While the icy sea numbs your extremities, from high up in the mountains the razor sharp winds cut across your throat leaving you incapable of speech. All one can do here is observe, there is something holding this damnable diorama together and through the pieces Kave give us we’re able to make out some of them. Not the entire mechanism, of course, but enough to make the unwary run for their lives screaming in terror. This is definitely a headspace most people would do anything to steer clear of.
‘Ominousium’ is the equivalent to piloting your craft directly into the fiercest rapids you can, capsizing and then awakening beneath only to realize that you’ve been sleeping the entire duration of what you’d call your life. I’d imagine he didn’t compose these tracks so much as he channeled them. The ritualistic undertones to his compositions point towards trance states being achieved with a complete disconnect being the final aim. Late night musings on the nature of reality and the double edged sword of insight and madness we carry within our minds; don’t go into this dynamic tableau unprepared, be very very careful how far you allow yourself to venture within ‘Ominousium’ because if you’re not mindful you will be lost. Permanently exiled on jagged rocks until you slowly slip beneath the water to join your brothers and sisters in a spectral chorus calling others to their doom.
Kave – Ominousium
Cyclic Law, 79th Cycle
CD 2015
Santa Sangre 