Click cover to hear a 2min MP3 of 'Chtonic Meditation'
PLATE LUNCH catalog #:
PL03
OUR GLASSIE AZOTH - s/t (CD) / released December 1997
Tracks
Total running time: 35:11
REVIEWS:
"Hard to nail down its elusive power and provide comment. Enigmatic may be the word. Charged with mystery. Fascinating. A release to be cherished and handled respectfully."
from: Peter "Brainpang" Warner - 5/21/2001"Weirdstone", "Chtonic Meditation" and "Iosis" are the titles, that show up next to the title track, that is also the name of the project. As if the elements would philosophize about themselves, crackling feedback-noise-moraines roll with vibrating drones through an archaic sound-landscape. The 'harsh' noise builds no hermetic wall, but opens to iridescent crystal structures, which roughens the sphere-sound with rocks and stones, sand and ice to fluttering, high frequencies. Out of this sound-spectrum, broken in microwaves, a sharp wind blows simultaneously and mirrors those rough form of beauty, that sounds 'forbidden' to those ears, drilled with the consonance-and harmony-understanding of the Christian-occident. Those who have shook off this acoustic hygiene-neurosis and who have turned to the music of Tony Conrad, Iancu Dumitrescu and the 'Storm of Drones' - the 'somnient continuum' - will find the 'right stuff' on "Our Glassie Azoth" as well.
from:
"BAD ALCHEMY" #31, Germany, 2/98 ---> Review by Rigo Dittmann.
...featuring 4 tracks of really far-out but never particularly harsh or difficult compositions featuring feedback-like electronics, intense wedges of synthesized sound, almost white noise distant backdrops, ethereal and eerie cauldrons of sound that, on track 3, give rise to what sounds like a tortured electric guitar mixed with the electronics to ear-bending effect and creating an immense wall of brilliant soundscapes that really cut like a knife yet, equally with the rest of the album, are quiet hypnotic landscapes. This is not melodic, sweet or rhythmic, but it is absolutely magical stuff, inhabiting the more dangerous and interesting end of the space music scene.
from: "COMPACT DISC SERVICE", UK, 2/98 --->Review by: Andy G.
Feedback as amplified music's shortcut to ecstasy: once attained, the next step is to sustain the pleasure or risk the whiplash injuries of a rapidly spiraling descent. Claiming their early work dealt in entropy, Welsh noise unit OUR GLASSIE AZOTH convert the mass of energy they once applied to maintaining stable conditions into a fabulous delirium of competing frequencies. The overtones rising above the din combine in a stiff harmonic froth out of which OGA sculpt cake-like cathedrals of sound. A truely beautiful confection, but your dentist might not approve.
from:
"..."Our Glassie Azoth" is an altogether darker and more challenging concept. The name is an alchemical signifier for the prime fabric of the cosmos, whichexists in a state of constant flux and chaos.It was originally applied to a set of pieces for an Italian tape compilation on the entropy of the natural enviroment, and has now taken on a life of its own, as yer cosmic fabric will tend to do if left without adult supervision for too long. Thus a self-released cassette led to this, a stunningly silver-sleeved CD on the "Plate Lunch" label. With "Our Glassie Azoth" you have dress circle seats for the Big Bang rather than comfortable first class tickets on a luxury star cruiser travelling between exotic resort planets. The curtain-raiser track "Our Glassie Azoth" orders itself from fragment of sound like a new star coalesces from wisps of cosmic gas and evokes a similar sense of wonder to that extraordinary sequence in C.S.Lewis's "The Magician's Nephew" where the lion-God Aslan sings the world of Narnia into being. Staying with the Narnia parallel for a moment, the second track "Weirdstone" is a howling ear-shattering horror that conjures up the terror of the children observing the self-sacrifice of Aslan to the White Witch on the Stone Table in exchange for the life of the traitor Edmund in "the lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe". If Merzbow was to be commissioned to remix the beauty of Windy & Carl in an attempt to describe what a really bad migraine is like, it might sound like this. If the opening track seems to suggest the birth of stars, "Chtonic Meditation" is very much about the opposite, the process of entropy is played out in this remarkable 12-minute track, as towers of guitar harmonics are shredded and tossed into a void until nothing is left but a giant tearing sound that would have fans of the more industrial end of the spectrum grinning from ear-to-ear, ventolin for the ears, no less. The relatively peaceful coda "Iosis" most closely reflects the pastoral recording setting, balancing sustained high frequency drones against electronic bird calls and other natura- listic sounds, somewhat repairing the psychic rift created by the previous two tracks. A revelatory release..."
from: "PTOLEMAIC TERRASCOPE", #25, UK August 1998 ---> Review by: Tony Dale
Reissue of a cassette from 1996 by this oddly named Welsh outfit. Probably the closest thing to a "noise" recording on Plate Lunch, this is actually a fine post-noise release of textual soundscapes featuring mountains of echo for a very deranged and lous psychedelic feel. There is none of the distortion the overpowers most noise recordings, however - sounds remain user-friendly, distinct and very well recorded, with a feel closest to early Nurse With Wound, Arcane Device or Asmus Tietchens than, say, Merzbow. That doesn;t mean that you can spot the sound sources they are processing- they claim to use no "electronics" so who's to say how they managed the crystal clearsonic blur of shimmering effects and high end frequencies that make up the first two tracks? Track 3, the longest track here at nearly 12 minutes features primative drifting waves of feedback over faint percussive sounds for a much more lo-fi feel with quite a bit of tape hiss and distortion. Track 4 drops the volume and hits a serene angelic note, like a post-industrial Popul Vuh - perhaps the most adequate point of reference since Florian Fricke also had a knack for making deep electronic-sounding music with acoustic instruments. NWW, Tietchens,Vuh, psychedelic feedback - how can you go wrong? Four tracks, 35 minutes packaged in elegant black on silver - very good indeed.
from: "ANGBASE", #3, Fall 1998 ---> Review by: Carlos M. Pozo
