Ugasanie - Call of the North

I think a lot of the times, what many people cannot understand about the dark ambient/drone genres is that in order to full experience every ounce of sound, each chord and layer of depth that may roam through one's head is that you need to have an active and pure imagination. Simply listening to one of these albums with a closed mind just doesn't cut it; but putting yourself where the artist intends to put you, imagining yourself in the locale of whatever sanctuary - or damning hell - he or she wants you in can be the difference in understanding a musician's work, or the failure or lack of responding well to their trials.

And that's much the case with Ugasanie, a relative of the Cryo Chamber family that I've listened to once before, and again can explore his mythos. While I wasn't all too impressed by his original work with White Silence, I find that the producer revisiting colder, bleaker, and darker themes in his new work has brought forth a much more impressive array of shadows and frostbite.

While his previous album wanted to shelter in humanity, bracing the cold weather and trying to maintain as chilly an atmosphere as severe winter storms give out, the somber sounds within Call of the North focus on the mythos mental disorder known as arctic hysteria. Wherein the disorder can cause erratic and disturbing behavior within populations that live in the arctic, it's now laid side by side with this latest work, and the somber melodies and saddening tones take in that tone wonderfully.

As layers of sampled sounds and ominous atmospheres plague your ears, the ever spiteful call of Winter whips by your ears and tries to lure you into a slumber to death. Perhaps the most stunning track on the album that really cracks down on the overall theme would be Arctic Hysteria. Using the voice of an old Yakutish man taken from an attack of polar hysteria in the 60s by a group of researchers led by Eduard Alekseev, this track goes forth and shows you just what can occur when this disorder strikes. There are some who believe that spirits are the cause of these attacks, and after listening to such wild recordings, I wouldn't doubt if that was the case.

Each and every other track builds upon this theme of deathly preservation in the face of an all-out assault by a stinging and icy raw storm. A transformation has occurred with this artist for the better, and when I imagine myself in the desolate wilderness struck by an intense Winter while listening to these songs, I shiver with both fear and delight. My mind can take me far into a cold abyss, but this album not only helps me go further, but it also helps me fear the ruthlessness of the coldest season of them all. Dec 05 2014