Dark Music Review – Cosmic Irracionalism
Review Written By Casey Douglass
Album Blurb:
"Once I had a dream in which I saw a fascinating picture in space. I was bigger galaxies, like the scientist I watched in the microscope as the fundamental laws of physics form a vivid picture with many fine details and colors. I could move the pieces and change this picture. When I woke it was a powerful experience and I could not Express it in music. Creativity is the power over chaos!" Because I purposely broke the physical laws in the world, which created the soundtrack. (Carst)Carst again pleases us with dark collages. Album was created 3 years, strictly maintaining the concept and idea will trigger great emotion and excite your subconscious.
Cosmic Irracionalism
is a dark ambient album that certainly seems to have a strong sci-fi
thread running through its design. Echoing guitar notes hum in
soundscapes that seem to reflect sound from hard metal surfaces,
giving many of the sounds and notes heard a pleasing metallic
overtone. That’s what I got from Cosmic Irracionalism
anyway, but reading the blurb above, I can see how watching the
cosmos in a more nebulous way might create the same kind of
impression.
There were a number of
tracks that I wanted to comment on individually, as they conjured
some great mental pictures to mind, or at the least, made a lasting
impression on me. The first of these just so happens to be the first
track on the album: Signal. Signal is a track that repeatedly builds
into peaks of screechy static and tortured strings. The track
intersperses these peaks with more subdued spells of looming drone
and smaller detail sounds. I must admit though that my favourite
aspect of the track is that the electro-sounds seem to take on the
aspect of wolf-like howls at one point. This might just be down to my
own appreciation of wolves and the things that resonate with me, but
it felt like a great way of adding another meaning to the track title
of Signal.
The next track that I
wanted to mention is Acquire Through Awareness. This track starts off
with the gentle sounds of what could be described as a colony of
frogs coming to life, their calls becoming more numerous as time
passes. This strange sound is then met with the metal of strings and
what sounds like an echoing distorted response. As the track
continues, things take on a higher tone and at times, more relaxed,
with some components of the sound seeming to take on the aspect of
female vocals softly singing.
The final track that I
wanted to write about individually is Mimicking The Magnetic Fields.
A harsh sound becomes a gentle string with a rustling clattering
heart-beat underneath. The sound of the track becomes more desolate
over time, but not in an unrelenting way. There are some sounds that
seem to be distant screams and doors banging, or at the other end of
the scale, shimmering high notes and almost sacral chanting. A track
that seems to have a lot going on that’s for sure.
Cosmic Irracionalism
is an interesting and nicely dark, dark ambient album. The sounds
used and twisted into the soundscapes have enough variety and
textural differences to keep the ear engrossed and the mind alert. I
give Cosmic Irracionalism 4/5 and would especially
recommend it to anyone that might like space-based/sci-fi tinged dark
ambient music.
Check out Cosmic
Irracionalism on bandcamp at this link.
I was given a free
copy of this album to review.
Album Title: Cosmic
Irracionalism
Artist: Carst
Label : Black Mara
