“Very dark with spectral noises ,one listens to Chapel Image alone maybe, but not alone and in the dark”
1 Chapel Image 45:27 Sky Burial Music
(CD 45:27) (V.F.) (Dark ambient, Industrial, Drones)
I didn't have no more news from Michael Page further to his somber and intriguing There I Saw the Grey Wolf Gaping, appeared in 2012. Although the style Dark Ambient is studied, detailed and literally invading since the last decades, the musician without address had succeed to bring the music of this album towards a level of Mephistophelian atmospheres which suited admirably well to the name of his project. Since then, Sky Burial made 6 albums and all were published by various labels. In fact, the great majority of Sky Burial's albums, I have counted 16, found different labels on to be heard. CHAPEL IMAGE was realized on the Polish label, Wrotycz Records, which specializes in Dark Ambient, Industrial and Neo-folk music. A label made for Michael Page and the music of his last album!
Distant winds rise with iodized murmurs, bringing an anabatic mass and dusts of glasses which sparkle like a crystal choir that is crumbling. Blowing the hot and the cold on an ambient music where the elements fool the senses, Sky Burial raises a soundtrack with urban elements, I think in particular of plane reactors' winds, others more organic, like those long gargantuan groans, which are exchanging threats by the means of the imps of Aeolus. Sounds of footsteps, mechanical jingles, rustling of wind on an irregular asphalt, waves of Mistral and hootings of draft coming from the abysses of the earth are so many elements that my senses detect and interpret in this long movement where the nuances ask for an attentive listening before being revealed. And nevertheless, the music of Chapel Image is everything, except discharged of interests. The winds are of an incredible violence, a little as if Satan was capable of blowing the anger of Aeolus with an unsuspected power. These winds which by-pass, as infiltrate, monuments of priesthoods as other abandoned saint places, crown also some nice ambient rhythmic patterns which remind to us that the very black music of Sky Burial possesses a soul, a life. And that could be mine, like yours. And at the very end, I have loved these very dark ambiences of this fascinating sardonic liturgy that is Chapel Image. The sound is rich and powerful, my ears have even continued to buzz after a listening, and the winds overflow with anger while being filled up by metallic tones. And the fact that the music of this Michael Page's 16th opus follows one long road of breaths, of whirlwinds and of mad vibes from Aeolis on an uninterrupted music track, gives the latitude necessary to the musician who crosses continents like his winds to well develop the 45 minutes of this album. And no, these minutes do not pass in a gust of wind. They are meticulously developed, going from dark openings to corridors of disused industrial parks and to areas of turbulences. So, bringing together opposed elements and particles, but which welded together give a solid work of industrial Dark Ambient style. To listen to with good earphones. Alone maybe, but not alone and in the dark!
Sylvain Lupari (November 7th, 2017) *****
Available at Sky Burial Bandcamp