Dark Music Review – Deus Sive Natura
Review Written By Casey Douglass
Drone veteran Creation VI (Russia) presents us with his debut album on Cryo Chamber.
The cold wind howls outside the warm yurt, the shaman inside prepares the pipe. The inhale is deep. With the exhale he starts throat singing. The smoke dances between drums and bells raised by the rest of the tribe. Sweaty face sway and glazed eyes blink in rhythm with the beat.
This album is a journey of us humans moving through the ages in our universe. Trying to figure out our place within it as we forge myths and philosophies. Build megaliths and temples. Send our prayers into space and bide our time waiting for the miracle.
Recorded on old tapes for a fuzzy warmth. This album uses a lot of acoustic instruments like blockflute, chinese flute (hulusi), shruti-box, harmonica, ocarina, kazoo, bells, chimes, seeds & seedpods. Tribal drums make you feel like you are in the middle of a hypnotic ritual. Recommended for you who enjoy Ugasanie and Paleowolf and field recordings.
I first encountered
Creation VI’s work when I reviewed his Myth about Flat World album last year. It was one of the most peaceful dark ambient albums
that I had listened to, and it regularly lulled me to sleep (in a
good way, that wasn’t a way of saying it was dull, far from it).
When I saw Deus Sive Natura (god or nature) appear on Cryo
Chamber, I was extremely interested in hearing what he’d created
this time. What I found was an album that made use of the kind of
shamanic beat and chants that helped me remember how I first began
looking for darker, grittier music.
I used to buy CDs from
New World Music, and yes, it really is as new agey as it sounds. This
was long before I even had Internet access, so dark ambient was
totally unknown to me at this point. I purchased Phil Thornton’s
Shaman album though, and was blown away to hear something that
wasn’t all pan-pipes (I am now violently allergic to pan pipes) and
angel music. This was animal and dark and hypnotic, in the way any
good shamanic album, in my opinion, should be. Well, after listening
to Deus Sive Natura, I now remember why I love this kind of
album. That isn’t to say that Deus Sive Natura is new agey,
I was just roaming down memory lane, kicking a few stones as I
wandered. Oh, and I’ve tried to find out what some of the track
names mean via trusty old Google; I’ve used brackets after the
titles to indicate what I found.
Ancestral Voice is the
opening track of Deus Sive Natura, and features a soundscape
that I really fell in love with. The sound of seed pods, a rhythmic
chant and an infectious drum beat really creates a space that is
trance inducing. I’ve been known to trance journey, and I could
feel myself being lulled and pulled by this track. The rhythm feels
just perfect and I found it hard to keep my head still as I listened,
the pressure building to rock gently forward and back. Ancestral
Voice also features some field-recordings: bird chirps, twigs and
leaves crackling beneath the feet, and a few floating voices, the
titular ancestors maybe. I particularly liked the moment when I
realised that the bird chirping had become its own rhythmic beat, and
that I couldn’t really recall when it had happened. As I listened,
I was a little concerned that I might have found my favourite track
straight away. That did turn out to be the case, but there were
others that I very much enjoyed too.
Deus Otiosus (“idle
god”) follows Ancestral Voice, a track that I felt began with the
audio equivalent of a white fog. If the journeying shaman of the
first track is now between worlds, Deus Otiosus very much put me in
mind of some of kind of shadowy spirit realm. There is a lovely
detail sound of what sounded like ankle-bells, setting up the
impression of someone steadily walking through the low visibility
landscape, the bells themselves maybe employed to scare away evil
spirits. I felt that the fog turned pretty black as the track
continued, maybe the mind of the shaman shedding its attachment to
form as he/she goes deeper.
Deeper in, Cycles of
Life is the next soundscape that develops around the listener's ears.
A sustained “Ahh” chant-like sound gets us going, a rumbling drum
beat its accompaniment. The chants turn more animal-like as the track
progresses, the drums becoming a little subdued, field-recordings of
snapping undergrowth emerging again. The mental images conjured by
this track were of being stalked, maybe even death stalking life. The
drum later takes on the aspect of a slow heart beat, chants and a
buzzing noise arising as time progresses. The final image this track
left me with was of a cracked light bulb with all kinds of flying insects
flying towards it, the falling bodies of their incinerated companions
adding yet more light to the scene, even as the death toll rises.
Divine Intervention
follows Cycles of Life, a track that features what I’d call a
shimmering drone-chant interplay that builds into a subtle prolonged
“fanfare” , the kind of accompaniment that you might watch solar
flares slowly erupting from the surface of the sun to. At around the
four minute mark, I thought I heard other vocals in the pleasing wall
of sound but that could have just been the way a mind hunts for
things. They might have been there, they might not. It was nice none
the less. The soundscape does change as the track continues, female
singing/chanting adding a lovely dose of flavour and sound to the
various rattling, buzzing and wind instrument notes.
The final track is
Natura Renovatur (nature renewed, I think), an epic 23 minute finale
that revisits a good number of the sounds and styles of the other
tracks. Beginning with the gentle sound of wind, a drone soon grows
from nothingness, airy movements and subtle chants hanging in the
space around the other field-recordings that make an appearance, from
bird chirps, to a kind of whimsical squeaking sound. At one point the
dominant sound becomes a kind of siren, a kind of blaring sound
although that word is too harsh to describe what is a pleasing
effect. Natura Renovatur also contains a rhythmic drumbeat that
adopts a number of different beats. A satisfying track to listen to.
There we have it. Deus
Sive Natura is a stunning shamanic dark ambient album, the
swaying drum beats and natural sounds mingling and hooking into the
primal depths of the psyche, dragging that little wisp of essence
that we believe to be “us” into another plane of existence.
Visit the Deus Sive
Natura page on Bandcamp here for more information, and be sure
to check out Ancestral Voice below.
I was given a free
copy of this album to review.
Album Title:
Deus Sive Natura
Artist: Creation
VI
Label: Cryo
Chamber
Released:
June 13, 2017
