Horte – Horte (Svart Records, April 7th, 2017)

Horte investigates the buried human being, the unknown person. Here the bass is not distorted, the bass is the distortion, and it is stream of free consciousness flowing, that sometimes fails to crystallize in song form disfigured by psychedelic stabs, sometimes gets lost in the crossroads between the unknown and the law of relativity.
The gaping bass is the river that carries the romantic melodic vein of the mysterious voice, hidden, sometimes distant, aiming to draw volatile landscapes, a voice that in “Koko Kalmo Pakassa” weaves arabesques of bold liturgy aimed at defining the atmospheric dreamy exploration of the distorted reality. It is the meditative drone, slow and muffled, with minimal keyboards and cymbals dueling with the bass, the insistent keyboards notes lead to an apparent quiet sea with solutions similar to subtle ripples of perpetual motion tides.
“78” is a black light movement, blinding, direct to the bottom of the heart, it suggests escape routes and / or resistance.
The sound of the guitars prefers shoegazey drifts, but their sound definition is never intrusive, rather structured as a function for the creation of an ancestral landscape, beating minimal assumptions, interlocutory counterpoint.
“Taajuus” is slow, solemn, mysterious and menacing, in search of the lost ecstatic drone. The notes are economical, almost impressionist in the definition of the necessary tools to the listener who, stimulated by the Socratic and the free will, may risk opening the door to the glorious ascension, or the one for the descent into hell.
The philosophical work center is the research, the revelation of what lies ahead on the tip of our forks, actualization of the “Naked Lunch” that holds us hostage, suspended in a magnificent and glacial place, with strong mystics and agnostics flavors.
“Horte” is a beautiful and exciting record, I did not understand a word of the songs contained in it, but I got too much by their expressive power, the expanded sound sometimes is forced into a narrative form, other ready to explode free to forge sound statues of unearthly beauty.
“Horte”, inevitably, will take the honors that still will never be enough.

Rating: 10/10

Schoolboy Johnny Duhamel

Pre-order via Svart Records