SONOLOGYST

Ancient Death Cults and Beliefs

Just as with his previous releases, SONOLOGYST presents an album that is rich in texture and depth; it truly is a high fidelity experience, and a pretty dark one as well.

The more albums I review, the more difficult it becomes to come up with psychoacoustic terms or analogies to describe sound. Obviously, a (good) review must go beyond just creating beautiful metaphors to poetically describe what is being heard, but at one point, succumbing to that practice becomes inevitable -and necessary- so I can try and put into words what the artist is putting into sound.

I would hesitate to label SONOLOGYST’s work as "musical movies" since the term doesn't even make sense to begin with, but just as the work of Braulio Lam, his use of field recordings, samples and overall sound manipulation, does evoke strong and vivid visual manifestations of what we're listening to. We've all weaved stories while listening to typically-structured songs, but when you're listening to “non-musical” sounds and not just notes the reaction is very different: mental images become an almost instant and inevitable reflex.

Ancient Death Cults and Beliefs effectively creates a particular mood without feeling like a cheap movie score which shoves emotions down your throat just to force some sort of reaction. Raffaele could have easily gone the lazy route and embed his pieces with overly exaggerated cult-like chants and an endless array of sinister tropes just to get his point across, but he masterfully avoids those unnecessary elements keeping everything to a minimal. As a result, these soundscapes barely have any movement, yet their depth makes you feel you're trapped inside them, and every creaking sound is a reason to be alert, no matter how loud or quiet it is.

Raffaele sculpts songs out of thin air, giving shape to the abstract; however, he withholds just enough to keep the listener guessing what’s going on. The recognizable rhythmic and somewhat melodic pattern that appears on “Ceremony” just adds more to the mystery instead of providing clues or any point of comfort through its repetition. “Primeval Science” has a similar structure, in which there’s a discernible melody amongst those metallic textures that sound like knives are being sharpened. This dynamic gives the songs the notion that there’s something hidden underneath; the overall experience feels like unearthing mysterious artifacts from the soil of ancient ruins.

The fusion between organic and artificial is well balanced. We can appreciate the natural timbres of acoustic instruments, like the clarinet on “Anubis, House of Dead Prince”, but its slow cadence makes it sound as if it is slithering through a dusty, empty floor. More than an instrument, it feels more like a character within the context of this piece due to the excellent atmospheric work that surrounds it.

Conceptually, the sources from where SONOLOGYST takes may be a little limited, but this is not an anthropological study: It is a brief aural documentary that takes from Christianity, Mayan spiritual beliefs as well as Egyptian mythology; the way these concepts apply to what we’re listening is not entirely up to interpretation (“Anubis, House of Dead Prince” has a middle eastern modality and “Purgatorium” does evoke the sensation of being stuck), although the aforementioned “Primeval Science” and “Ceremony” have more semantic ambiguity since they’re not linked to any specific archetype.

Ancient Death Cults succeeds because its ominous vibe does not feel forced even if it is overwhelming at times. SONOLOGYST effortlessly takes from genres like drone and dark ambient but knows what to take from them in order to improve upon their formula. The way Raffaele traps his pedaling notes within a suffocating ambiance, while at the same time using samples and acoustic instrumentation (processed and au naturel) results in an album vastly rich in texture and depth, containing pieces that, even when dealing with the topic of death, feel pretty much alive.

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