Crucial Bliss Releases

SORC'HENN FARO: Death Of The Island Sheeps CD-R
BLISS38
$6.50

MP3 EXCERPTS:
Track 1: Dodsdansen, life of an island lad ::MP3 EXCERPT::
Track 2: Ovader ::MP3 EXCERPT::
Track 3: Leka met elden ::MP3 EXCERPT::
Track 4: Enez Varv Faaro ::MP3 EXCERPT::

I've been haunted by the beautifully dark loopscapes of French artist Sorc'henn dating back to first hearing the band on their Harmonium pieces & dead reveries disc released by Faunasabbatha, so we were immensely stoked when Sorc'henn was interested in releasing some more of their music through Crucial Bliss. This new full length features four tracks of Sorc'henn's murky, dreamy drones that stretch out over a misty, grey-washed landscape much like the one pictured on the exterior of Faro's foldout sleeve, a lightless wetland that fades way into the distance, obfuscated by a thick veil of shadow, and the fourth track is additionally notable for being a collaboration between Sorc'henn and members of Portland black metallers L'Acephale and Virginia deathdrone outfit One Lifeless Eye. The first track is essential Sorc'henn, a twenty-one minute dronescape that is mainly made up of a single warbling harmonium loop that repeats over and over and over, as a young woman whispers lines of poetry over top. As minimalist and simple as this is, it's amazingly beautiful, and almost has a My Bloody Valentine-like quality to it, like one of the guitar-feedback ambient parts of Loveless that has been melted and crushed into a misshapen version of the original melody. The second track is a mere four minutes in comparison - a deep, murky field of subterranean rumblings and a distant crackling sound, like a phonograph needle stuck in a run-off groove over crashing waves of distorted tidal thunder and ominous harmonium drones. The next track is basically a continuation of the previous, with those sinister harmonium drones humming over surges of distorted low-end thunder and weird noises that pan from speaker to speaker. The last track, the collaboration between Sorc'henn and members of L'Acephale and One Lifeless Eye, is the longest on the disc at ovr twenty-six minutes. This one is a sprawling expanse of murky black ambience, a slow-swirling fog of muted harmonium notes, oceanic sounds, chirping noises that might be frogs, and hushed, whispered cackles and demonic processed vocals drifting across a vast void of Lustmordian darkness.

REVIEW FROM JULIAN COPE/HEAD HERITAGE: These past two months, my personal choice for all night repetition, ie: the piece that helps me most easily access the Underworld, has been the Uber-haunting 22-minute track ‘Dødsdansen (Death’s Dance), Life of an Island Lad’, from the FARO album by Sorc’henn. Released on that tremendous Crucial Blast subsidiary Crucial Bliss (www.crucialblast.com), FARO is a fine fine Black Metal record and, except for the more obvious and more stylized final 26-minute ‘evil’ track ‘Enez Varv Faaro’, goes about its sinister business secretly, intoning plainsong in cloisters, invoking camp-fires, digital distortion and wolves, and dancing at the edge of total ambience, nay, ambulence! Then, two minutes from the end, some old French torch song comes in and really sealeth ye atmosphere. Su-fuckin’-perbe!