slow swords

music for losers best of 2013 reviews videos

[slow-swords]

Skáphe, Skáphe

A web of shadow to be torn in - gloomy echoes from the past to drift and decay, tie and twist. Lost in the corridors of a decrepit, crumbling mind, drowning in black.

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Fell Voices, Regnum Saturni

An ever-expanding swell, a mass grey and bleak. Its arms stretch towards the infinite, wrapping the world in a blurry totality. Here it is complete, encompassing. Wind howls and screams lost, for the fog is all. Murk that cannot be challenged. A submerged cry is to be but smothered here, in the din, as we are lost.

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Black Cilice, Summoning the Night

Bleak, unholy, and black. A wild rampage against order, a raucous shake upwards with a fist at the heavens. Screaming through the night, now unleashed. Deafening shrieks call out, unsated and lusting for more.

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Sean McCann, Music for Private Ensemble

A mournful sigh. Not solitary,  but humble - a gathering of only the closest. A time withdrawn from outside cares, from the immediate peril of death and life, even as it draws from these extremes. The tender, stripped privacy explores both, and leaves but awe.

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Earn, Hell on Earth

Elongated sigh, a whisper in your ear. The glance turns, speaking softly, and settles on the air. This is the longing, the wishing, the desire - tranquil yet seeking. It only wishes for more breath.

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Aaron Dilloway, The Beauty Bath

A subtle drop. Resonances hover in the background, a calm eeriness, one that is tough to shake, as if one more second could lead to the scrambling. The uneasiness lingers and lingers, coloring what is normally wrought heavy with a lighter shade, a defter touch. Tenderness, even.

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Helm, Silencer

Scalpel over slather. Piercing tides are that are slowly released to flow. Unnerving, uncertain - the creeping descent into the consumption.

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Phill Niblock, Nothin to Look at Just a Record

Immersion. Everything and nothing, suspension is supreme.

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Raum, Event of Your Leaving

A gentle, wintry drift - a sigh. The passing which is let go. That sigh is held onto, for what feels like an eternity, as the emptiness blows through. The spectral shadow lingers, distant yet near. Solitude if need be, but a haunted solitude, alone and unsure, disembodied. This is your passing.

[slow-swords]

Well I guess it's already pushing the end of the year - I haven't written nearly as much as I would've like to, but at least something came out...I will most likely be trying to touch on many of the releases I didn't get the chance to properly take in and digest over the year these next months or two, and I will be throwing the very best over here. Hope you enjoy.

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Hair Police, Mercurial Rites

Creep, crawl, scuttle in the dark...true post-industrial disaffection for a broken world. It is not blackened and dark but grey and filthy, littered with scraps from a million meaningless lives. The gears no longer turn for this septic world. Filthy soot drenches the soil and skin - cleanse yourself.

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Natural Snow Buildings, Daughter of Darkness

The expanse knows no bounds. One cannot even drift, only melt, be consumed, like liquid into nothing. The deep, gaping hole of oblivion, descending downward, lost...the tide ebbs and flows, but all else is suspended, thrown into something else...here is the infinite

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Recondite, Hinterland

The land behind. Here is where the frost reaches out, fresh in its grasp. Cold, with a certain faint heart underneath - the pulse of life which remains below the coat. The desolation of winter always provides the opportunity for reflection, and true warmth.

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Stars of the Lid, The Ballasted Orchestra

The unsettled. Eerie creep of burnt hushes, shapes that never fully form. It's about what's in the shadows, what's behind the smokescreen. Even the warm glows are obscured by time, drifting into a melancholic netherworld of their own making. Hints at hope still lost in a haze, beautiful on their own.

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Compound Eye, Journey From Anywhere

Staring deep into the zone. This is the anywhere, the boundless field of immersion. Temporal concerns do not exist, subsumed in the rupture here. Fall through the hole and be gone - let the mind melt. 

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Xiphiidae, Quaking Myth

Turning inwards. The slow, soft smear of colors bleeding into one - when time is suspended, and passing moments barely touch the surface. Pause before the distancing, before it fractures. Bask in the fading colors for as long as you can.

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The Stranger, Watching Dead Empires in Decay.

Decay of another sort. Here, the windswept back alleys of the metropolis are the terrain. Washed out, barren - grey. Steel moans.

The throb that propels other music associated with the municipal is here dragged through those barren passageways of filth. There is the crawl here, the beat of ecstasy turned to a heroin drip.

The passing of an old world into the blackened night, crumbling into nothing.