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- Listening recommendations: Adrift , The Premature Burial
Impressions
Backyard
Ghost's album is definitely not for the faint-hearted. If I didn't experience a
"dark" (black metal&co) phase about 10 years ago, I might have hesitated to hit play on certain tracks, and probably considered them
blasphemous as my sense of foreboding grew stronger. But Descântece (Romanian term meaning "incantations") is a
mild, yet disturbing dark ambient album, having the supernatural as a
prevailing theme: ghosts, burials (and premature ones at that), haunted
forests, spirits and rituals. Releasing a mere 8 days before Halloween must
have been a joy to "ritualists" everywhere.
Interesting
enough, the artist is not Romanian. He did use Romanian titles and the album
cover features a Transylvanian castle. When asked about his interest in
Romania, he confesses: “I Guess I Am Interested In Romania, Eastern Europe And
Its Folklore, I Have A Good Friend From Romania As Well And Wish To Honor Her…”
The album’s
second track, The Premature Burial is
similar to Negură Bunget's atmospheric track Primul Om, (probably the most famous Romanian black metal band) as
far as the bright, symphonic, positive moment of epiphany is concerned; even
mentioning these words - epiphany, positive - is blasphemous to Backyard Ghost
and to this genre. But I never really understood the meaning nor the need of
these bright parts in this context. I assume they're trying to bring some
balance to the troubled, abyssal tunes. Nonetheless The Premature Burial's brief epiphany-moment gets altered by the
excessive use of the resonance effect of the analog synth. I would have
preferred a more extended 4:16 part and less resonance effect (that reminded me
too much of Jean Michel Jarre). Apart from that, it is one of the most melodic
tracks on the album, along with Adrift. Hoia Baciu refers to a Transylvanian forest famous for its
"paranormal activity". If Backyard Ghost used field recordings for
this track (and he probably did), they were taken from this forest, to our
excitement and terror, while the ending track of the album, Stafie (Romanian term meaning
"ghost"), portrays the perfect outro taken from a horror movie.
The track
titles may make your skin crawl, so I will refrain from going deeper into that. After some time I became interested in how much the artist “means”
with his work. How serious he seems when he composes something like “You Drew A
Star And I Drew A Circle”. A friend of mine (interested in this genre) shared
his insights with me: “I see things as a performance, an act. There are some
radical bands, too, but they wouldn’t leave prison anytime soon”. Performance
it is, then.
A few more
words about the artist: Backyard Ghost really enjoys using ellipses when
describing his music, indicating uncertainty, unfinished thoughts and probably
mystery. However, the song titles here and in dark ambient as a whole tend to
leave subtlety at the door, with titles such as The Premature Burial, Neglected
Spirits, First Signs of Infection,
trying so hard to evoke a sense of dread, and terror, that they remove any sense of
mystery. Even though these titles suit their respective tracks, leaving a little
something to your listener's imagination goes a long way.
On the
contrary, Backyard Ghost, when asked to describe the message conveyed by his
music, he cites the opposite effect: “I Usually Let My Musical Works Speak For
Themselves… And Let The Listener Use Their Imaginations, Like Reading A Good
Book… To Conjure Images And Deeper Meanings To The Sounds.
I'm not that type of person who
listens to music on max, but for the Backyard Ghost's rich sound texture I made
an exception. No one will blame you anyway,as your neighbours might be more inclined to associate the dissonant drones with some bird trapped in their air shaft, rather than the music you listen to.
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