[Reviewed by Peter Marks]
Where did this come from and do we dare to investigate it’s point of origin. The albums (yes, that’s right albums) comprising this release are clearly not of this Earth. My only hypothesis rests with an article I read last week about there being a cold, empty and mysterious region recently discovered in our universe; they must have been made there, how else can you explain the malevolent tone to them. This is no easy listening collection of old-time favorites playing on AM radio, the four plus hours which this takes to get through go from darkly engaging tableaus of dissonance into Soviet era anthems after which they become saturated by the existential nihilism only a truly focused mind could provide.
Elugelab previously had an EP out on the label… he must have been waiting until the time was right to spring the trap because ‘Vaporised on Impact’ definitely is one. Not only do these pieces actively subvert one another, they don’t even have the barest thread of narrative to connect them. I feel he’s re-defined what an album can be thanks to placing eight of them next to one another. Keep listening and they become individual tracks that are part of a larger whole, a more realized concept of creation if you will. On the other hand, I’d be very happy to just describe them as dark matter which has somehow slipped past our own atmosphere and is now on the ground. Mutating and growing at at exponential rate, soaking into the soil like depleted uranium.
The one directive given is that this exists in order not to exist. When I got this thing a couple weeks back, I thought I’d be cavalier and tackle the entire creature in one sitting. This proved to be problematic given how far and wide my mind began to stray from the path of orderly thought; the natural world around me seemed to know what I was up to and suddenly birds began screaming outside and the clouds came. I was oblivious to whatever they were trying to warn me about, wrapped up in the embrace of Elugelab’s monstrosities. It does tend to envelop you in a shroud of impenetrable smoke and hazily illuminated terrain. The drones come and they go, sometimes snippets of dialog or atmospheric chords interrupt but they never linger long.
What remains are memories of places and people you’ve never met; the enigma of the heavens and what our role in them is only deepens the further into these tomes you proceed. Don’t bother trying to make any sort of logical arguments here, the harder one struggles to understand just what his music means the more facets to it will be revealed. This is the point of impact, as the title implies and there is nothing concrete to dangle rational thought off of. The framework of reality has been completely destroyed and we must now pick up whatever pieces we can to begin again.
He challenges us to operate without protocols; the inherent randomness of pure chaos overruns everything, how can one know they’ve come back through all of this if they don’t even know where their world begins. It is no wonder that every photograph I have seen of disaster survivors shows them wandering with a wild, ragged look in their eyes; they have no purpose it seems except to act as conduits for whatever has transpired and in that fleeting moment where everything around them vanished they were part of something. A revelation occurred and that’s precisely what awaits you here.
Be aware.
Elugelab – Vaporised on Impact
Stars, dots and the “new” Junk, starsdots021
Digital/USB Stick 2015
Santa Sangre 