Every metalhead I know loves ol’ Tobias Möckl. The man who turned “lo-fi recording” (to be polite) into an art form and has constantly kicked ass for over twenty-five years now and inspiration doesn’t seem to want to leave him alone. It’s been a couple years since we had a new Paysage d’Hiver offering, but the man also known as Wintherr (which I like to dramatically pronounce VIN-TAAAIR) has a developed a tried and true method to his high-art mayhem over the years: with him, it’s always better to wait. So we do.
But my-man-Tobi and his pals Zaahral and Yhs of Darkspace had a surprise for us lovers of spacey and experimental blippity-boop. The new record is called -II, not to be mistaken for their killer 2005 record II. This is new stuff and it’s even more boundless and unpredictable than the earlier works.
-II (I love that name, it’s unspeakably funny to me) consists in one, whopping 47 minutes-long song that layers a myriad of spacey samples (including a woman speaking into a PA for almost the entire duration), an obsessive industrial guitar riff that comes and goes, keyboards, sequencers and awesome, Gabber-like drum programming for a touch of alien soundscapes. Whoever is programming these drums is going so ham at times, it almost feels like you’re inside a nightmare one of the members of Skinny Puppy is having.
Now, whenever you deal with a ridiculously long atmospheric metal song, you need to calibrate your expectations. This is not a technical record in any conventional sense of the term. The creative vision is what matters here. The feelings and emotions being evoked, the mood it creates and whether or not that mood shifts over the duration of the song. On -II (seriously, how fucking ballsy it is to call your record -II), everything works. I mean, it’s a monolithic experience that only has replay value in specific circumstances, but it will kick your fucking ass when you need it.
My favorite part of this album/song/whatever is the deconstruction the main riff is undergoing over the course of it. What begins as the sound of a war machine rhythmically progressing through the cold, dark cosmos gets distended, stretched out and pulled apart by all sorts of organic and electronic interferences, including a killer dual vocal performance that is so drenched in reverb and other digital effects that I can’t really say which part are sung by my man T-Möc and which parts are sung by Zaahral. That monolithic rhythm is getting gradually swarmed and picked apart by forces that feel both inevitable and out of control.
Then it transforms into something else.
You need a love for blippity-boop in order to enjoy it (the Metal Architect told me he didn’t even finish it and I don’t blame him, it’s not for everyone), but it’s purposeful. There’s a story being told with sound here. It’s about desire, transmogrification and endlessness. About halfway through there’s an inexplicable distorted, out of key piano playing. I thought it was super fucking creepy given that I wasn’t expecting it. It’s that type of detail that shines on such an experimental record. This type of detail is almost jazz in spirit. There’s a new variable being thrown and everybody sorts of builds on it. It’s the essence of creativity to me.
Is this even metal? Fuck, I don’t know. This doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard before. Not even older Darkspace material and this is why I love it. The promo material called it psychedelic atmospheric spatial black metal, which feels accurate for lack of a better term. It’s some peak weirdo metal if you ask me, but it’s never weird for the sake of being weird. -II is Darkspace testing the limits of what they can do, but also redefining them.
-II is coming out on February 16 (ironically in the dead of the VIN-TAAAAIR) and you should definitely let out your inner blippity-boop weirdo to it.
You still got it, Tobe!
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