Amorphix - A Gnostic Hymn

Hear The Track Here

When I first came across this Soundclick artist a couple of months ago, things didn't look at all promising. Persephone (The Rites of Spring)(July 2006) was billed as Electronica: Ambient and if you take the title and genre classification into account, it was enough to make lightheaded as I started to review it. After all, ambient to me usually means something that only Eno would sick up. Sure, I HAVE heard plenty of decent ambient tracks, and even praised a few, but generally this whole area gives me a bad case of the Hershey squirts. Amorphix, blissfully unaware of the miasma he was about to encounter, couldn't know that I would be absolutely blissed out by the track, giving it a Must Have in the process. Kinda says something about his overall compositional skills I'd say.

A Gnostic Hymn (liber xv) shows exactly why that first track made such a great impression on me. Like Persephone, it's a track from Beyond The Veil Of Light album, and judging by these intense musical peices that is one album worth getting. As you would imagine from the title A Gnostic Hymn is 'an attempt to set the first two texts of the Collects from the Crowleyan Gnostic Mass into a hymnal form'. Alllllrighty then, that's a lot clearer. No, not really so I went a-looking and came up with this should you wish to know more about the subject. Now let's all bow to the great god Google and get back to business.

And what a business it is too.

A Gnostic Hymn - whatever it's real purpose - in this particular case means great music, performed and produced to a very high standard indeed. Sure you would need to be into long, involved musical peices, and you would also have an inclination/fascination with the darker side, this is a intensely sombre peice of music. It's also a work of delicacy and musical tact, each part neatly dovetailing into each other seamlessly, giving the listener the spiritual sense the music requires. There is no doubt in my mind that Amorphix is a frighteningly intelligent musician who SHOULD scare me (and you too) but when the music is this fine, I'll pretty much forgive anything. While less immediate - if such a thing can be applied to this artist - than Persephone, time will show that this is just as classy, detailed, emotive and just plain gorgeous. Two Must Have's in a row. That's certainly a milestone for me and this often irritating genre, Amporphix I salute you, this stuff is just wonderful.

MUST HAVE