Wandering through the Void
This is an album that does exactly what it says on the label. ‘Wandering’: aimlessly moving from place to place, without purpose or destination; ‘void’: a lack of anything concrete, without distinguishing features or substance.
Apparently, this is not an album proper but a collection of tracks taken from three other releases, two of them splits with Old Burial Temple (whom I adore and have previously written up here) and Vrasësinerëzve (who I don’t know anything about at all, but are surely worth it for the name alone). Given that this album is a compilation of pieces from three different sources, it is amazing how similar all the tracks sound—really similar. They’re all composed of synth, unadorned by field recordings, sound effects, vocals, or any other miscellaneous sounds—just the same synth sounds, the same abstract and atonal approach, the same notes that have been held for too long yet not quite long enough to be considered dark ambient, and the same oh-so-spooky track titles that bear no relation to the music. These eight indistinguishable pieces of synth-driven noodling could have been played by a curious cat: indeed, if there was something in the liner notes about how these pieces were actually played by a curious cat, I’d probably be right into this album, in the same way as I am excited by Hatebeak or Caninus (grindcore bands fronted by, respectively, a parrot and a dog). However, the liner notes omit any such feline interaction, suggesting instead that the tracks are actually played by one ‘Ghoul‘ (whom my research suggests is an Adelaide-based fully human artist who also plays in black metal band Entsetzlich—hopefully not keyboards).
Ghoul
I don’t have any problem with aimless synth-driven noodling (I am one of the very few people I know who actually quite enjoyed some of Neptune Towers’ space-faring abstractions, with which this shares quite a few similarities), and there is nothing inherently wrong with aimless synth-driven noodling as a concept. But I found the sameness of each of the eight tracks on offer here a real turn-off; given the immense variety of sounds it is possible for a synth to make, I found myself getting irritated, even annoyed, by the directionless homogeneity of them all. I began having fantasies of sitting Ghoul down, putting the album on shuffle-play, and challenging them to name what track was playing to see if even the creator of these amorphous pieces of keyboard choss could tell them apart.
Once these fantasies had abated, I began to suspect that perhaps, just maybe, I’d totally misunderstood the concept behind the album. Perhaps the goal of the album was not to evoke dark energies, create a melancholic mood, or lay a bed of spooky foreboding suitable for roleplaying (because, honestly, it does none of these things). Perhaps the goal of the album was instead to create a feeling of fatigue and resentment: the exact kinds of feelings one might have if one were actually wandering through a genuine void! Wandering through a genuine void, there would be no landmarks, nothing to tell you whether or not you’re progressing forward or merely circling the same piece of void again and again; everything would seem more or less the same, and there would be no way out, nothing to do, and nothing of any interest in any direction. The experience would be equal parts boring, annoying, frustrating, and unsatisfying.
In which case, Wandering Through the Void is a brilliant piece of art, and Ghoul is a total genius.
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Track List:
01) Glorious Turmoil
02) As Their Ashes Fall from the Sky
03) Final Resurrection
04) Mystery of the Depths
05) The Perdition Fields
06) Homage to a Shaded Moon
07) Apparitions in the Mist
08) Crossing the Interdimensional Bridge
Rating: 3/10
Written by: Mat Blackwell
Label: Aurora Australis (Australia) / AAR24 / CD
Dungeon Synth / Dark Ambient
Heathen Harvest 
Make yourself heard