Monocube & Troum ‎– Contemplator Caeli

2019 lp on Transgredient Records.

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raison d'être & Troum ‎– XIBIPIIO. In And Out Of Experience

When I started discovering noise, experimental, ambient and drone music as a teenager, raison d'être was one of the first projects I listened to via the Cold Meat Industry website. I discovered Troum some years later through a friend, and while the latter have remained a staple of my listening tastes, I don't think I've hear Peter Andersson's music in years. So I was pleases to hear that in 2015 they were to release a collaborative album called De Aeris In Sublunaria Influxu. It turned out to be ok but not very memorable, and I think it was overshadowed by Troum proper's album of the same year, Acouasme.

But this new second joint effort is jaw-dropping. As its concept is based on some sort of metaphysical notions from an Amazon tribe, it has a very devotional and consecrating, ritual tone. While I can distinguish some songs which fall more on Troum's (the opening track with the levitating atmosphere accentuated by those amazing voices) or raison's ("The Machine Starts to Sing which has a slightly more post-industrial sound) style, the album truly sounds as something that goes beyond a simple sum of the two projects' style and there are moments I wouldn't expect from them, as the manic "Expulsion of the False Self," that is driven by  feverish ritual percussion or the almost jazzy dirge ambient of "Dreiklang Aus Äther" with the cello rising from the synth fog, and of course the unsettling throbbing bass guitar of "Hang'-E-Lah." There are also some Heresy-era Lustmord horn sounds on Ijä-Kyl that contrast perfectly with the dombra lute picking, creating a Tibetan/Central Asia mystical cavernous environment that is really enveloping. There is a third installation of this collaboration coming and let's hope that it will be even better than this. Congratulations Peter, Glit[S]ch and Baraka[H]! 2017 cd on Transgredient Records.

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Martyn Bates & Troum - To A Child Dancing In The Wind cd

This collab with Eyeless in Gaza singer is one of the highlights of Troum's career which anyway has many peaks. Based on William Butler Yeats poems sung by Bates in a calm and evocative manner and transcendental drones and beautiful passages with accordion, balalaika and harmonica, this album has an amazing yearning feeling. The first track "Mad as the Mist and Snow" and it's reprise in track 6, are probably some of the best things ever put on record. Must listen. 2006 cd on Transgredient Records.

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