Sabled Sun - Signals II

Conceptuality of musical albums is very common for bands which exploit industrial genres and subgenres. Creating music around some specific idea and follow its emotional path gives an artist a strong background for expressing his feelings. But what happens when the whole project is built around some specific concept? Does this artistic move limit the ability to improvise and explore much wider fields of abstractivism? I think that the answer to this question is too complex to deal with in this text without blowing it up to the level of an essay that can put the reader asleep. Though in this review I will keep an eye on a project that falls exactly in to the category of concept oriented.

Atrium Carceri is a famous name for those of us that dare to dive into the world of dark ambient music. I am sure that each of us tasted from the albums of Simon Heath in the past which were mostly brought out of the doors of Cold Meat Industry label. Due to the different personal problems of Cold Meat frontman and a lack of activity of the label, Simon was forced to find another solution for the fountain of his creative energy. Apparently, the best way to solve this issue was to establish the own label that Simon called Cryo Chamber and put all the efforts to concentrate on net-releasing of the old Atrium Carceri items along with his new side projects and few other individuals that joined this label recently.

The new digital album of Sabled Sun was stocked on my hard drive for quite a while already, but only during the last few weeks I found a right mood for it and I will explain why. If you remember the albums of Atrium Carceri, then you will be able to feel the whole difference of genres and ideas that Simon tries to implement through both of the projects. While Atrium Carceri is built on the skeleton of dark ambient music with some industrial and even rhythmic patches all around, Sabled Sun is all about a pure drone ambient sound. The conceptual focus of the whole project is "the tale of an unnamed protagonist who wakes up after deep freeze hibernation to find the world in ruins". As soon as the record under the name 'Signals II' that I have in my hands is the fourth in the series of that concept, I join the show somewhere in the middle and cannot feel the whole continuity of the albums from one to another. Anyway, this is the material and I have to deal with it in any possible way.

Drone ambient music (for me, as a personal experience) demands a certain level of concentration. Built up over some constant droning sound, every minor change or effect reflects some special event in the music or marks the specific movement in scenario. Sabled Sun doesn't change the rules when fills the air with a constant background hum during all the 53 minutes run of one track album. Being monotonous most of the time, this hum creates a hypnotic atmosphere of a slow drift between stars and collapsars. However, not much happens in the music itself. There is a constant scratching effect that guides long parts of the track, fading away from time to time and some electronic pulsating signal appearing randomly here and there. The hum doesn't stay the same but evolves few times changing density and level; and those minor changes separate the track in to three or four themes with a little bit different mood. Few parts of this long composition are frankly boring, when the listener is kept in a constant expectation of some things to happen, but they arrive in a delay of three to five minute. Those delays influence strongly the hypnotic feeling not in a positive way, causing a slight annoying effect through steeling the attention from the main idea of the album. There are splashes of some airy melody that arrive suddenly in the middle of nowhere, but they are relatively rare leaving more space for the plane droning sound.

Unfortunately, the review of the album itself is much shorter than a preface. I tried to concentrate and dive into the meditative state, but there is something in this record that makes the listening process too forced and artificial. I keep comparing it to some other artists of this genre; honestly, Sabled Sun is weaker than I expected from Simon of Atrium Carceri.
Anyhow, abstractive music is a deep personal experience and I prefer to leave my reader at this point to judge about the quality of the product on his own. Apr 10 2013