Viviankrist

Viviankrist - Morgenrøde
Cold Spring. CSR68CD
CD/DL




For my troubles I end up on the Cold Spring promo list. I indulge briefly to see whats going on in there which is hard on the peepers due to it being pitch black. It doesn’t look a happy place to be. Maybe this is where I really should be though. Listening to an 80 minute Dark Folk release that was recorded in a Swedish forest at three in the morning by people with names like Cragnomort all while trying to make sense of the current uncertain global political situation. Cold Spring does tend to lean heavily towards the darker side of life but its not all doom and gloom. There is Noise and Power Electronics to cheer you up while for night lovers there’s Dark Ambient, Ritual and all those live Psychic TV albums to indulge in once more. Their website is an enormous one stop shop for all the dark things in your musical life and if so inclined and finding myself in a deeply moribund mood I could spend a lot of time there.

One thing led to another and before I knew it I was in the miserable godforsaken hell hole that is the Cold Meat Industry website. A place I haven’t been to for donkey years. I was surprised to see it at all until I discovered that the label died a death a few back and that what I was seeing was maybe a storefront of some kind. I used to listen to a lot of miserable music back in my [brief it should be noted] CMI days, lots of bands with Latin names whose releases were often described as being the very darkest Avant Garde Dark Ambient Folk Ritual that money could buy. At that time and feeling that Schloss Tegal could only get me so far I gladly soaked up lots of what Cold Meat Industry and Cold Spring had to offer and then I bought some razor blades and ran a hot bath. Thankfully I didn’t go through with it and decided instead to cheer myself up by going to the pub and starting a fight with a total stranger who was much bigger than me.

Of the promo’s that have been arriving from Cold Bath I mean Spring over the last few months nothing has really grabbed my attention but this did. It might have been the word Japanoise in the press blurb that swung it. Which this really isn’t at all. It is recorded by a Japanese person though, Vivian Slaughter or Eri Isaka if you prefer. Once of Gallhammer, a three piece ‘grating black metal’ outfit and wife of Mayhem vocalist Maniac. Both residents of Norway where its bollock freezing for much of the year. When Gallhammer went the way of all flesh Slaughter decided to pass the interminable bollock freezing Norwegian winters by disappearing in to the Slaughter/Maniac basement to record music on an analogue synth. These sessions eventually begat Morgenrøde which to these ears sounds more like Klaus Schulze than K2. There may be some ultra distorted vocals on there and some noise [last track ‘Pleasure of Confusion’ is the nearest we get to all out noise] but for the most part this is pure analogue synth burble. Tracks like ‘Cactus’ are the kind of off kilter thing Aphex Twin did so well on Selected Ambient Works while ‘Higher Minded’ is a sped up all over the shop Moroder. The title track is an eight minute minimalist head nodder, ‘Spite Spits’ all distorted beats. That time in the basement was well spent. 




Cold Spring