Darkrad - Little Black World

I will not discover anything new to you today if I tell you that our lives are divided into various periods. If you do not believe me, just try to look back and define specific milestones and frames of events and I am sure that you will observe some kind of a map of those periods. Some of them are full of bright moments and occasions, periods of joy and delight, but some of them are darker than the darkest hour of night, full of grief and complete insanity. Both cases are really important in development of personality because the experience itself is priceless whether it is good or bad; it is worthless to forget the moments of weakness and fear.

Yet, there are certain situations when it seems that there is no deeper abyss to dive in, desperation fills every corner of your soul, squeezing the last breathe from your lungs. All your demons start to crawl from below the bed and all skeletons in your closet step outside to reward you for your deserts. Your throat suffocates with a silent scream when no one is around to give you a hand. But you can find yourself a proper partner that at least can spend some time with you during your darkest hours. In my case it is a new album from the house of Darkrad, a project of Russian based resident which is currently located in US. "Little Black World" can describe a current condition of my mind better than anything else. That's why I embrace it willingly in my search for some comfort, but I am not sure that I will find it in the end of my sonic journey.

To remind you, my dear readers, BR already focused on oeuvre of this talented lady in the past. The review of her previous album released via Cold Meat Industry during the labels' last flash of agonizing body before it vanished from the face of earth, was published something like a year before. Since then, she passed various transformations in her personal life which included relocation to US in search for better life, far from unstable situation in eastern areas of Europe. But changes in one's life don't always bring delights; furthermore they are often paired with a lot of disappointments and failures. That's why the new album becomes some kind of a reflection of fears and frustrations when the whole world around shrinks to the size of a little dark room.

So, what can I find inside this creation that I hold in my hands today? If I look at the evolution of Darkrad's music, I can certainly notice a shift into less processed sound, much rawer and dirtier than before. The rhythm which could be heard in some of the tracks from the previous album is gone for good leaving a lot of space for disturbances and dense industrial textures. The first track "Chernota" is full of witch-like whispering or even half-screaming over a delusive rolling hum when all the phantoms start to rise in every corner of the room. The same singing technique is transferred into the second track "Nobody Knows" where Jana adds a lot of rhythmically fading-in and fading-out impulses to create a strong feeling of some kind of an invisible monster breath. Huge blood moon illuminates my house when a hungry succubus crawls slowly to feel the taste of blood. A pulsating heart beat inside the third composition resurrects the incarnation of the beloved once lost, the creature of the night, to feed on my fear, to enjoy the red stream of life, to drink what is left from the energy that I was driven by all those years. Slow and minimalistic "Someone Beneath" passes nearby without leaving too much impression, but "Dread Unknown" hits with noisy textures full of desperation.

Most of the tracks in this album are relatively short; the music is not stuck on one specific theme and rolls forward quite smoothly. "Ocean Beckons" is spiced with background electronic pulses that add some soft rhythm into the same minimalism which flows from my speakers for twenty five minutes. The sixth composition "All is Wrong" takes this minimalism into even more extreme side to cover a sobering of tired and dying creature with it. And finally, the last track "Rasshelina" finalizes the "Little Black World" with the last sip of hopelessness as the only possible conclusion of the whole record.

Undoubtedly, a really deep depression is projected from this short album, the sort of depression that paralyzes the will, fetters every muscle with its dark power, and poisons the heart with its sonic venom. You might find this CD quite dull if you approach it in wrong mood, but I am sure that you don't want to be even close to the "right" condition. That's why this music will correspond with the souls of specific people only and the releases' limitation proves the point. Fifty copies contain a cassette tape, exclusive artwork prints, download code, merchandise items and a secret personal message from Darkrad, presented in hand-made packaging and assembled personally. It is the time to face the Unknown and your darkest fears. Oct 10 2014