Pillowdiver - Bloody Oath

Step... Another... One more step... Will you follow me into emptiness? I don't ask for too much, only the belief that everything will actually dissolve into one amorphous substrate. So, will you dare? If yes then just one more step, take a deep breath and dive into one misty, extremely dense atmosphere that Rene Margraff aka Pillowdiver builds for me and you, my faithful reader.

Pillowdiver is all about the drones. If you cannot feel those small changes, those drops and rises of a tempo and mood then you will find this release just one more boring piece of plastic. But if you reach the point of no-return, the point of the highest meditative experience, you will definitely understand that whatever pass you take, you will end up with one huge space full of blinks of light, a constant game of shadows, a soft touch of invisible vibes which create this special atmosphere for you and you only to float in.

The trap of time and space which you find yourself in is there on purpose because when the musical tension levels reach their peak nothing can stand aside, nobody remains indifferent. "Back in Black (Angus Freeze)" wraps you in a dense cloud of electricity while a soft horn-like drone spins your consciousness, launching it to the journey through foggy atmosphere full of microscopic drops of water. A sense of direction is lost forever, dispersed in this milky stream carrying lazy waves of endless sound. A discerning soul can feel a constant transformation when the tension reaches its peak and then discharges when the track fades away.

The second one "Down Under (in two parts)" keeps more or less the same tempo which could be heard before. I didn't understand the need to divide this composition in two parts while both of them are built around the same drone with only difference in a height of frequency. Hey, and one more thing, the first part is more quiet with less electrical disturbances. But they return in the second part, gaining strength and sharpness like small icicles trying to bite an uncovered face during a long winter night walk.

The last but not the least, "Misty / Devastated" concentrates on a softer drone rolling forward, but slowly it's being covered with the same electrical storm that reaches its peak somewhere in the middle and keeps it until the very end.

Though I've read some information in different sources that mister Margraff used three popular tracks from the past as a baseline for his compositions (Back in Black by AC/DC, Down Under by Men at Work) they are not recognizable at all. As I said before, the business is around pure drones that demand a certain level of meditative approach. There were few parts when I couldn't feel a proper immersion also because fade-ins and outs were too rough (except of fade-in of "Misty / Devastated"), but in general this quite short CD of 22 minutes length leaves a lot of space for imagination. And of course, as it is already a standard for a Moscow based Dronarivm label, the music is reinforced by a hand-made, beautiful art package of the highest level of creativity.
Jan 21 2014