Sky Burial - IV : Of Dharma and Drowning

Those of you that will have read my earlier works will be only too familiar with the lavishment of praise I gave to the first Sky Burial release I heard, 'Spectrehorse'.

This release took me from the immediate start, as being a fan of Michael Page's "Fire in the Head" project, and seeing the clear and intricate references to Buddhist literature and folklore that this project hints at, I was delighted to see that the earlier work wasn't just a one off concept album.

This is the second release I have been offered from Belgium's "Silken Tofu", and if it is even close to the first, I anticipate big, big things from this label.

Interestingly, "Dharma" is a one track, Eighteen minute album, released as a 3" micro CD, limited to first editions of 100 copies. Don't let the length put you off however.

Sky Burial falls under the category of what I best describe as "Darktronics". It's not quite Power Electronics, not quite Dark Ambient, but a correlation of the two, giving with one hand, and taking with the other.

Like a lot of bands that borrow from Death Industrial tapestries, this release follows the tried and tested formula of starting off slowly, building up at a pace which always makes you anticipate a sudden complete change of pace, before slowing down again. This however has some really eerie and unsettling effects with it. My interest in releases of this nature is the way that the concept and theme always manages to find its way into the output recordings; in this instance, Dharma is a Sanskrit term which roughly translates to our "Law" - upholding the balance of life.

And this release certainly starts off to resemble some sort of peaceful and happy "medium". Almost like being "One with everything", just like Buddhist Dogma preaches. And in almost ironic beauty, listening to this towards the end really does make you feel like you are drowning and clutching for some sort of hand to rescue you. Success. Jan 01 2007