A CD in a luxury package that tries to bring to mind different locations and happenings in the well-known epic fantasy-novel ”The Lord of the Rings’ by Tolkien. Several well-known and lesser known acts bring together 75 minutes of soundscapes.
The disc starts with “Fog On The Barrow-Downs” by Leviathan. Soft rumbling noises fill my room as I listen to this track, some far-away sounds that remind of voices, lost in the fog, a good start for this disc.
Aidan Baker is next, trying to take the listener to the mines of Moria. A dark drone is combined with high tingles of crystals (I assume) and the faint distortion of drilling. This sound is interrupted by some distortion more and more often, threatening sounds, just like a good soundscape should be.
Where Jäaportit is trying to show us I really don’t know. The Finnish title “Sydänyön Samooja Syvällä Unten Mailla Ja Metsien Soilla” doesn’t give away that much to me. When listening to the track one gets the idea of travelling to a forest, where a fight could be near, seeing the militaristic, marching sounds that get more and more prominent, but the tracks returns to more quiet neo-folk-like sounds afterwards, so it seems like we evaded the fight this time.
As All Die describes “Treebeard Of Fangorn” a quite minimalistic track of birdsounds and occasiona horn-wails that nonetheless stays quite interesting inded.
Gydja scares the listener, with a darker soundscape “Torech Ungol”, waterdrops are combined with more unclear electronic sounds to create fear. And it succeeds, a very nice dark soundscape.
To end the cd Transcendent Device brings “Fires Of Mount Doom”. The drones that are the base of this track are a very nice way to leave this cd indeed.
A cd that is not mindshocking, not very experimental, but nice to listen to indeed.
(according to the label, this limited cd-r is now sold-out)
