Tome / Seven Morgues -
"Deep in marble"
9,5
Euro
with shipping
sold out
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The human
voice can be employed to elevating and angelic degrees or
unsettling, distressing and disquieting ones. Tome know all
about the latter three. Including one half of the dark
ambient group Seven Morgues, Tome is a purely vocal
collaboration between Arie Kishon and Oren Ben Yosef, so
it's only natural that the two projects should share a split
album.
To say this stuff is disturbing is an understatement. Using
incantations, clean vocals, screams and shrieks, Tome hum
their way through three of the biggest aural blasphemies
I've heard. But this isn't loud, cacophonic white noise –
it's subtler, eerier, more malicious. Tome is a challenge
for those who think they've heard everything in the ambient
scene. Dissecting each song would detract from its magnitude,
sufficed to say that throughout their three tracks Tome
employ a mixture of soft, elegant chanting, pained wails,
screams and even weeping. They have a perfect awareness of
the strengths and abilities of the human voice, and they use
this knowledge to tear out all the frustration, pain and
torment within themselves, and deliver it with a hammer blow
to the senses of the listener.
Seven Morgues' dark ambience is slightly more subdued and
utilises occasional piano and guitar segments, albeit
minimally. Oren Ben Yosef's vocals are now familiar, though
just as disturbingly strong and sinister as before. This is
the first time I've heard a piano used to this degree in a
dark ambient record: short, staccatoed melodies play in the
background, perfectly adding to the eerie elements of the
music, especially in “Unspeaking the Universe”.
“RetroTragedy” is the longest track on the album, beginning
as a Litegi-esque incantation with deep vocals, faint piano
and guitar feedback and climaxing into a dizzying series of
drones. It's perfectly fitting that Seven Morgues take the
second side of this split - any dissimilar act would have
totally spoiled the effect.
http://www.myspace.com/houseofthelastlight
http://www.myspace.com/sevenmorgues
http://www.myspace.com/tomedrones