In the catalogue of the English Cold Spring label militant music plays a prominent role. This album, the debut of Clear Stream Temple is no exception. `XVI` takes us to the Arab world and contains critical messages about the Bush government and its foreign strategy.
The music is a mixture of heavy industrial and dark ambient, classical elements, Arabic sounds and many samples. Many speech samples can be heard from the likes of Bush, mostly about terrorism, soldiers and politics. ‘XV!`was created after the events of September 11th. Originally reissued as a limited cdr, this reissue on Cold Spring is time repackaged and includes extra tracks.
The music has often a martial feel, though the tracks rather vary in tranquility. Both the ambient-orientated pices and the martial industrial tracks are worthwhile. As you can expect, there are quite some eastern influences, which you can’t do without bringing Muslimgauze to mind. My favourite track is ‘Age of Terror’, with a very heavy percussive sound, or ‘Djinn’, where powerful metallic percussion is combined with classical sounds and of course Bush talking about terror.
Clear Stream Temple, a project of Abby Helasdottir, has delivered an interesting album, not only for its political content, but also with good quality music. Not light to digest, but rewarding. God bless America for this inspiration.
