Hive Mind/Luasa Raelon "Night Maintenance" CD
[Chondritic/Snip-Snip]
First up on this lengthy split CD is the massive 20-minute "The Marble Orchard" from Hive Mind, building in slowly with rumbling drones and sprawling textures against a subtle midrange hum - ominous, persistent, and hypnotic, as always. As things progress the piece gradually thins out and transitions into a dense yet minimal current of resonant low-end that pulses its way downwards towards the closing moments. Therefore the track is a pretty consistent listen that offers little variety, but that's not a negative characteristic whatsoever in this case. Luasa Raelon follows with four shorter tracks (by comparison) that total around 33 minutes, beginning with "Gateway to Despair": Nine-and-a-half minutes of sinister dark ambient that's among the most effective I've heard from the project to date! The transition from the Hive Mind track into this work is excellent as well, since the two pieces work well together and are similar in general tone. Luasa Raelon's work does possess an eerier undercurrent though, along with very faint instances of melody, which continue in the cascading waves of "Devouring the Light". "Twilight of the Gods" is a bit different, however. The sounds are sparser, with more of an unusual electronic sizzle to the midrange and an increasedly percussive motion to some of the resonating textures. "Sand Beasts" is then more than 10 minutes of back and forth drones and hums layering in and out amidst one another. Afterwards, the title track ends things off with a 17+ minute collaboration between the two projects. Since their individual work is somewhat comparable on this record, it of course makes sense that this joint venture is a very fitting counterpart to the prior chunk of material. Vibrating drones and lots of intense low-end pull you down while ethereal midrange and fleeting hints of barely musical fluidity creep in at points - adding brightness and detail. The layout is printed entirely in metallic silver ink on thick matte red stock, which looks fucking superb. The imagery seems to be close-up shots of skeletomuscular diagrams and such, which take on a very abstract appearance in this particular instance. Very nice, indeed. Perhaps you could call this effort a little slow moving and immobile in its entirety, but that consistent and unwavering style works great during the individual pieces. Only when experiencing such for a good deal more than an hour does it become somewhat tedious. For the most part everything sounds full and ultra thick, and I can't make up my mind how I feel about the slight insinuations of roughness at the perimeter of certain areas of the work. For the most part I think it adds a cool aesthetic to the material that's a little different, so none of these minor issues should be considered faults in any way. I've enjoyed what I've heard from Hive Mind thus far, and I have to say that Luasa Raelon has really been greatly improving in recent times. This is somewhat of a short review for such a long CD, but the tracks tend to take hold and build on carefully executed variations rather than traveling too far away in their allotted times, so dark ambient fans should quite enjoy this one. (7/10)
Running time - 71:11, Tracks: 6
[Notable tracks: The Marble Orchard, Gateway to Despair, Devouring the Light]
Snip-Snip - http://www.iheartnoise.com/snipsnip/

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