Liste der Bands Dark Ambient Northumbria Helluland

Like a lot of albums I review (or not), Helluland has been composed by artists I didn't know at all beforehand. So I often find myself writing introductions whose shape seems completely acceptable, but whose content leaves me a mitigated aftertaste, like a poor rosé wine going with the succulent summer grill coming earlier this year. A satisfactory whole where the subtly hidden ignorance of the depicted artists seems to discredit a bit the unoriginal frame of the first paragraph relating the path of the group, before targeting the release interesting us afterwards in a review. And personally, I don't always have the faith to grind the complete discography of a group to talk about an album.

So let's spare ourselves, for once, of the perpetual archive I should write about Northumbria, since I never saw the names of Jim Field and Dorian Williamson before they appeared on the dark ambient label of my life Cryo Chamber, and speak with simplicity and without hypocrisy of their latest album Helluland, released in the end of march.

I promise you it's not (only) laziness.

What is surprising, at the first listening, is the discovery of an album not really dark, as we could expect from a firmly drone release in a genre more directed towards dystopia, despair or anxiety. Composed only from stretched layers of electric guitar and bass carefully sprinkled with field recordings, we'll be quickly taken to grounds of fairly clear and mysterious resonances, almost mystical. A real location that seems here beyond reach ; a land of flat rocks, floating in the oceanic mist of an endless twilight, allowing us during 57 minutes to try to unveil some of her secrets jealously kept.

And of course, like any thing keeping secrets, Helluland is a heterogeneous mix of bright and obscure memories, bathing into nostalgia, even melancholy and violence. The fickleness of the feelings it conveys is however always mastered, never immersing us too much on one side before sailing towards the other through a cleverly organized tracklist. Besides, the apparent simplicity of the production of this album is the common thread of its narrative framework, using in turn crystalline strata of electric guitar of radiant atmosphere barely tinted on tracks like Because I Am Flawed I Forgive You or the beautiful diptych A Door Made Of Light, and drone parts far more monolithic and suffocating on Maelstrom or Catch A Falling Knife II. The sunny spells of notes are occasionally faded by well-put sonic storms, reminding us we are privileged witnesses of distant memories only because Helluland wants it.

But if this country discovered by the Vikings allows us to share with her some dim emotions, we will never have a clear vision of their related memories, the coast of the island staying diaphanous, spectral. A visual aspect deliberately blurry, very well relayed by the ubiquitous reverberation and the parsimonious and mesmerizing superimposition of melodic layers in each track, never overdoing it through the listening. The exception being for me Song For Freyja, where the melodic moans are clearly drawn, as if Helluland herself couldn't contain the power of the feelings surfacing during the track, forcing her to describe an unforgettable woman that left an indelible mark on her ground.

The riffs escorting us during the whole listening session really seem to take us in a timeless place, bordered by mysteries. We probably leave our space-time for an hour, put into stasis without warning and seduced by the evasive facet of the album offered by the Canadian duo, to eventually try to reach the unattainable land of the flat rocks ; a challenge lost in advance, but we can not abdicate since we have this absurd hope we will see what hides behing the eternal fog surrounding the island. A real journey in weightlessness whose « dark ambient » labelling raised some debate, even wondering if Helluland had its place in the Cryo Chamber catalog. Even if I said myself that this album is more enigmatic and reassuring than worrisome or post-apocalyptic, it broaches in its own way loneliness and self-oblivion, two other topics intimately linked to dark ambient. And its atmospheric and intangible personality is precisely its strong point in a genre historically favouring low frequencies, and including it next to works like the disturbing Psychosis by Aseptic Void or the über-dark Outer Tehom by Dronny Darko is a proof of open-mindedness of the label to projects outside its already deep foundations.

So an excellent release, getting itself noticed in a house that quickly became an essential reference of the scene in barely three years, and already making me wait for the next album of the group. And I won't have any more excuse to not know them.

Oh, by the way, I lied. I couldn't resist to listen to their discography, casted in the same mould and as much commendable to the fans of spiritual emancipation. You know what you have to do.