Monday, December 18, 2006

Amorphix - The Dark Wood (Canto I)

Hear The Track Here

Amorphix is one of a very small number of artists this year who have scored big time with me. I've reviewed two Amorphix tracks so far - Persephone (The Rites of Spring)(July 2006) and A Gnostic Hymn (September 2006) - and both got Must Have ratings and that ain't too shabby t'all. What makes it even more astounding is that Amorphix works in the Ambient field, my least liked of all electronica. It's ambient innit. You aren't supposed to take any notice of it. Not so with Amorphix, his music picks you up by the neck and worries you to death. He's not averse to throwing in the odd 'wtf is that' either because - as you may be able to tell from the track titles - he's gone over to the Dark Side. Darth Amophix is well into a bit of paganism, black magic and all things sepulcheral.

No I'm not telling you what that means. Look it up, ya lazy sod....

The Dark Wood (Canto I) sounds like the usual Amorphix laughfest: 'inspired by Dante's journey through Hell. Dark, desolate & cold. The soundtrack to fallen souls in eternal torment.' Mmmmm tasty. There again, I knew about this side of his work when I reviewed the previous two tracks and I have found no fault in them whatsoever so - as odd as it sounds - I looked forward to this new horro....um.....meisterwerk. I worked on a remix of the Kenneth Anger film Lucifer Rising last year and I do like the dramatic flow you can get with dark peices and again Amorphix shows that he is an artist who knows what he wants. And to Hell with the rest of us, so to speak.

Still, it is the music we are about here not solving life's little problems, and musically you will probably love The Dark Wood - providing you wear a lot of black and wear shoes the size of stepladders. All joking aside (Ed: that was a joke?) as a peice of dramatic music, this is eerie beyond belief and not just because the wolves be a-howlin' at the door. Amorphix is a dab hand at creating a brooding air of menace, so much so that I prepared for this review session by wearing extra strength underwear because you can never tell with this guy. As a straightforward peice of music it's your usual audio treat, produced to a T and the kind of track that truly belongs in a fine horror flick. The Devil, so the old saying goes, as all the best acts and - on balance - I think I'd tend to agree with that. Not as immediate with me as the first two tracks from this artist but a gory little epic for all that.

Highly Recommended scary shit.

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