Black Chamber - Stalker

Hear The Track Here

Personally I am very much into plain speaking. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Speaking of which, I like the way musicians name themselves these days. Take, for example, band like The Dead Company, Amorphix, and yay even Black Chamber. What do they signify just from their names? The simple answer is that whatever it is, the music is not going to be an easy listen. Have a listen to all three and you'll see what I mean, these people skirt the very ragged edges of the genre known (and rightly feared) as Experimental Electronica. As if that were not enough, try Black Chambers jolly comment on his Stalker track: The stalker's come to claim its prey. Niiiice.

Cross?, check. Hammer, check. Stake, check. Brown trousers, check. OK, ready...

'This is the mellow version of another song of mine called 'prey'' and if this is mellow then Prey is going to be issued with a mental health warning. As we have discovered over the space of three tracks, Black Chamber doesn't mess about when it comes to achieving his particular vision and the music is, to say the least, hard to take. There again, I have fenced with this kind of music for a great many years and, to be blunt, still not much closer to understanding it, but I do know when it works and when it doesn't. Everything I have heard from this artist shows that he knows what he's doing, even when that isn't obvious to your average listener.

On that score, Stalker is almost mainstream in its approach and a long way from the tortuous Schism (December 2009), so much so that I even liked it - in a weird wtf-is-that? kinda way. Against a very standard bass and drum backline, weaves a dense, richly populated web of sound that some are going to love and most going to hate. For my money, what Black Chamber does, and does extremely well is to marry elements of Jimi inspired guitar fukry with dense clusters of extraneous sounds and rumbles. Looks weird as hell in black and white I know but it sounds, I don't know, right somehow. An angry, smouldering track aptly named I'd say.

Excellent experimental. Highly Recommended.