“Sepulchre is a monument of somber atmospheres where the shadows live and float through the keys and knobs of keyboard and synths”
1 Forbidden 7:11
2 Vault 9:46
3 Remembrance 9:33
4 Monument 16:03
5 Forgotten 9:27
6 Rest 11:58
(DDL 64:02) (V.F.)
(Dark ambient EM)
What a title! A naming which depicts the lugubrious universe of an intense black album that Ian Boddy has sculptured for his 6th North American tour in autumn 2012. Performed in the studio of the WXPN radio station, at the aurora of October 14th, SEPULCHRE wears marvellously the meanings of its naming. It's a monument of somber atmospheres where the shadows live and float through the keys and knobs of keyboard and synths, disturbing the night-peace with sinister singings, vampiric hooting and epidemic breaths which weave the roots of anxiety. Sorcerer of the nights of black meditations, Ian Boddy spreads the great lines of a disturbing musical universe where the life beats at knocks of sighs of Mellotron and its allies. SEPULCHRE is a big shroud of black poetry where Ian Boddy is the architect of an unforgettable musical night which reaches its paroxysm in the incredible dance of sequenced goblins of Monument, a track which should be a piece of anthology in the art of sequencing.
A slow lava flow of black waves and whiner breaths open the somber cosmic night of SEPULCHRE. Cosmic because all that lives around Forbidden sound like an intergalactic journey without helmet. One would imagine being in a corridor without walls, in an immense black hole where are taunting, chattering and sniggering some cosmic tones and organic winds which are prisoners in a mess of lines to the lamentations of twisted metal. Lifeless, the movement of Forbidden is delicately pushed by muffled implosions and slow modulations which are drawing some black movements. Discordant movements with abrasive outlines which move in an absolute void, such as dreams trapped in night sepulchres. And it's in this opposition of the phases that Forbidden extends its passive tones to Vault and its waltzing breezes which continue the exploration of the somber night territories without future. Rustles of night-whales invade our eardrums, waltzing in the arms of Morpheus who unfolds his metallic tentacles like some sighs of steel. The first rhythmic impulses can be hear on Vault with ice-cold shadows which float such as threatening laments in this astral tranquility which quietly is transformed in a night of anxiety for diurnal virgins. Ian Boddy weaves the lines of his abyssal world with a multitude of layers of which the implosives forms dance lazily in the rustles of organic sheet steel, creating a strange climate of obsessional madness which bursts out in an electronic storm. Remembrance is intense and distressing but also strangely musical with these synths and Mellotrons and their lachrymose tones which squeal and wave in a strange harmonious ballet, challenging so the laws of cacophony with a strangely poetic approach for a so passive track.
Monument is …monumental! We are entering in the den of the nightmarish agonies of SEPULCHRE with a stunning rhythmic pattern. Vibrations to the organic tones skip furiously between invisible lines, drawing aerobatics butterflies which oscillate frantically around the pulsations of a bass line. Synth layers caress this linear rhythm which clicks and makes crackle its ions to gelatinous tones in the furrows of an intense movement of rhythms which wave aggressively in the whims of Mellotron mists and synth solos which remind us a certain era. This rhythmic skeleton makes grow its bones with other resonant pulsations and sequences which intertwine its jumping ions in a rhythm of steel which rages in the lulling pads of a morphic synth. Synth solos are swirling there, embracing of their hypnotic loops a track which mislays by moments its demonic influence before dying in its last rhythmic palpitations where are squeaking these tears of steel and die gradually in this ballet of glaucous tramplings. Forgotten brings us to the ambient and black phases of SEPULCHRE with delicate twinkling arpeggios which are drawing the vestiges of a melody slain by darkness. Rest continues the exploration of these narrow corridors where breathes anxiety. The synth lines are agglutinating there, forming an intense pattern of emotions with hybrid tones which dance with tiredness in the breaths of night-whales. The Mellotron is intense. It draws morphic caresses which waltz with night and spin with passion in the implosions of muffled pulsations. The laments are as well touching as disturbing. They mould breaths of life of which the opposites bite for their survivals. And it's in this long morphic ballet where cry tortured spirits that SEPULCHRE ends its descent in the last night lights, fascinating the listener who would well like to return to the dark labyrinths of his magical night.
Sylvain Lupari (February 28th, 2013) ****½*
Available at DiN Bandcamp