I don't do music reviews. Internet taste-makers are useless leeches feeding off of artists and deluding mindless consumers. They provide strong support for the view that music is simply a consumable commodity, so far removed from actual art that people need micro-divided genres and intellectual hand-holding to identify what they're supposed to "like".
I do know this is an hour of anti-music(and terrifying but invigorating found-sound collage) I'll listen to again and again. As music goes, this conveys my ideal adopted ethos of pain -> fulfillment better than almost anything else. Especially worth a listen is the three part sequence of tracks at the end: "Through the glass of the roof", "Through the roof of your mouth", and "Through the mouth of your eye".
This album is an evocative ecosystem of beautiful(and beautifully grating) sounds, with crisp sampled howls of wolves, subtle organic string sections, heavy metal guitar screeches, scorching+ripping drums, and string sections distorted and sampled until they take on the fire of growling animals: a frightened pack of wolves backed into a corner. How can these disparate parts make a whole? I have no idea but they do. The work shows great restraint at times. Its character swings from that of a tasteful film soundtrack to thrashing hardcore. Pairing this to a film would undermine and discredit the images that spring from sound alone.
If you like ambient music with blood soaked teeth, this is worth a listen. Other albums by Ben Frost are just as good, and AURORA may be more accessible. I'd recommend everything by Tim Hecker as well. If this stuff isn't your thing, it's still worth a listen, because at some point everyone will feel like an animal fighting for life, and this music is a violent and even triumphant celebration of life.
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