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Artist: Netherworld Album: Kall - The
Abyss Where Dreams Fall Label: Mondes Elliptiques Genre: Drone, Dark Ritual Ambient Website: www.glacialmovements.com, www.myspace.com/glacialmovements
Rating: 3/10
Tracklist: 1. Kall - part 1 2. Kall - part 2 3. Kall - part 3 4. Kall - part 4
Although Wounds of the Earth has reviewed some Netherworld in the past, this is my first experience with them. Being that it is of the style drone/ritual ambient that means one thing: boring. Or does it?
Yep it does. I don’t know who set the rules for this genre, but it seems that in order for something to be "ritual ambient" it has to be the same thing looped over and over, and the longer the track is, the more evil and ritualistic it is. Anyway, Netherworld fit’s the bill for this perfectly. ‘Kall’ is a great example of generic ritual ambient. One piece of ambience looped over and over for 9-20 minutes, with some whooshing sound that plays for the entire duration of the track and then every so often some very subtle vocal samples play out distantly, crushed in the background of the track. There is also a lot of banging run through a large amount of reverb (this seems to be another staple of ritual ambient…yeah, I don’t really get it either). Sometimes there are sounds that could be chimes or broken swingsets. They work well…I guess.
I can’t really say much about this album because, well, there isn’t much here. I guess you could say this is a good example of ritual ambient and that it succeeds in its goal of being ritual ambient. But that’s about it. It doesn’t do anything overly progressive or attention grabbing. If you want some really slow boring music to meditate to then I suppose this would be as good as any. ‘Kall’ failed to conjure up images of the abyss or to transport my spirit to a parallel plane of being. It is simply too muddily produced and too haphazardly structured to make me want to listen to this in a meditative setting. This album is under the illusion that atmosphere manifests itself and the creator of the “song” must simply place two or three very slow sounds together and the song takes it own shape and form…sorry, but that is not how it works. There are no melodies presented here; there is no use of musical theory; there are no thick otherworldly pads or dark and brooding soundscapes. This appears to simply be a couple of noises sparsely littered with random found sounds all run through reverb and thrown randomly overtop of the main noises.
Overall, ‘Kall’ has all the elements that are necessary for ritual ambient. This however is also its downfall. Because it has ONLY those elements and nothing more. I do not feel like Netherworld has done anything more than the bare minimum of what is necessary to be able to deem something “ritual ambient”. Where is the atmosphere? What is the listener supposed to be imaging and where am I supposed to be taken by this? The album gives me no hints or speculations. There is no text in the album’s case, simply the track titles “kall part 1-4”. To be honest this album is a weak attempt that seems to have been thrown together quickly and without true conviction or purpose. Great, the title contains key dark ambient buzzwords like “abyss” and “dreams”…but where is the motivation? The inspiration? Where are the occult/hidden elements? Where is anything? There is nothing…just void. But in the most boring sense of the term. Sure, I COULD meditate to this. But I could also meditate to the hundreds of similar (and equally contrived) records out there. Netherworld does nothing here that distinguishes itself from the figurative netherworld of drone/ritual ambient.
-[.d4n b4rr3tt.] january 2008
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