Terra Sancta "Aeon" CD
[Malignant]
Sweet hell, this is an amazing slab of dark ambient mastery from this Australian outfit.  And his debut full-length, no less?  I'm impressed.  Four lengthy tracks of perfectly flowing desolation that creates a truly encompassing atmosphere that never feels dull in the least.  "Cold Light Infusion" sets the tone immediately with just under nine minutes of completely bleak and foreboding drones that really create a lot of visual references with the way they sort of linger in place and subtly devour their surroundings.  "Black Sun" continues in a similar vein with more than 10 minutes of murky low-end and midrange that rises and falls with ease.  "Blood Red Sea" is a bit softer and more spacious, certainly a subtler piece (though all of this work is subtle on some level), using more resonance and a twisted sort of high-end in the distance that adds a bit of a different air to this one.  The massive 20+ minute "Drowned (Desert Earth II)" ends the disc and takes the soft sparseness of "Blood Red Sea" and adds in some occasional resonant thuds and a little more dynamic activity in certain areas (including a few faint hints at melody leading up the final stretch).  It's interesting because a lot of these sounds are really hard to describe.  I mean, technically there aren't any real drones or hums per se, perhaps here and there, but somehow it all just strikes me as more of a literal sound - like field recordings or something, though not, of course.  But that gives an improper representation of the work as well, because "field recordings" have a stigma that is not at all related to these compositions.  I guess if you could imagine the entire world being scorched to the point of absolute devastation, this might be what a field recording of the moments precisely afterwards would sound like.  There's just this hopeless presence there, it exists but it really is complicated to define.  The sound quality is exceptional as well, so I would indeed be curious to know the means used for the entirety of this CD (generating the sounds, documenting them, and so on).  Everything comes across well rounded and fills the space surprisingly well, so I have not one complaint there.  The layout keeps it minimal with some excellent barren landscapes that look like post-apocalyptic wastelands, and very little text is used - allowing the imagery to do most of the talking.  Very nice, and it's worth mentioning that the visuals are an excellently appropriate accompaniment for this music.  Dark ambient scarcely gets better than this, I have to say.  The four compositions herein work perfectly together and definitely act as a complete and unified whole, and while there's not a great deal of individual movement, the overall tone and feeling generated by the compositions is pretty damn impressive - a feat rarely achieved within these circles.  Absolutely recommended.  I certainly hope that this release ends up being revered as a benchmark release for the dark ambient genre at this time period, because I don't think I've been this impressed by such an artist in years. (9/10)
Running time - 49:26, Tracks: 4
[Notable tracks: all four are consistent with one another and therefore incredibly well done]
Malignant Records - http://www.malignantrecords.com

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