With three albums on Cold Meat, Desiderii Marginis built up a solid reputation as a dark ambient act. Now and then the project of Johan Levin from Sweden also releases material on smaller labels, like this current vinyl mini lp on the obscure French Kaosthetik label. It contains 5 exclusive tracks and a rare older piece, in total almost 40 minutes of music.
Compared to previous albums like “Deadbeat”, the sound of ‘The ever green tree’ seems to be a bit less dense and industrial, with a more melodic and melancholic sound and more room for individual acoustic sources. The artwork, title and mood take you to mystical and dark forests where some rays of light are permitted to permeate.
It does not take long for the music to get me in its spell. After a range of very clear and detailed sounding rummaging on the metal scrapheap, I’m suprised by the acoustic guitar and neo-classical melody that carries the title track. The first reference that comes to mind when hearing this is Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio. The long tracks ends with a hypnotizing drone.
‘Hibernation’ has a more standard dark ambient approach, with low drones, dark rumblings and solemn synth lines. Very decent atmospheric stuff. During the following track I can hardly keep my eyes open, the slowly evolving sound layers and drones make me drowsy. Only the thunderous percussion of ‘Legends’ disturbs my daydreams. I’m tranquilized again by ‘Stalkinghorse’, a pleasant repetitive droning piece somewhat in the vein of Troum.
‘Hallmark’ has a nice crunchy distorted sound, which is nicely contrasted by a therepaeutic female voice speaking hroughout the song. The excellent record gets a worthy final with the dramatic and solemn ‘This vale of tears’, previously released on the compilation
‘The last bleak days’ in 2001.
