Bloodmist - phos
Bloodmist’s 2016 release Sheen captivates, hypnotises, and ultimately releases the listener back into the reality we dread. The album is a labyrinth of passages that leads you down the Mad Road. It is a piercing, yet moving journey; a patient dream that you grow to adore, a psychosis that is almost tangible - touchable. Sheen is a digital bath you can not drown in; a stalk that becomes a serpent eating another serpent; a cloud that hovers and rains green skin; a Tarkovsky film inside a peeling painting; a footprint of muddy water and reflections of dying stars.
Bloodmist is:
Jeremiah Cymerman: clarinets, pedals, Soma Laboratory Lyra-8, Moog Mother 32
Mario Diaz de Leon: Ciat-Lonbarde Tetrazzi & drum machine
Toby Driver: Sorrentino five string electric bass & fretless four string bass
Bloodmist’s second album: Phos is different. Gone are the gentle guitar textures that appeared on Sheen, with Diaz de Leon incorporating a touch controlled synthesizer. There is a greater use of rhythm here. While it is discordant, and never approaching accessible realms, the general way that this piece (split into five tracks) grips you, and moves you through its menacing world is deeper, darker, sinister and disturbing.
The bass tones that lure you into opening part Therianthropic Procession introduce you to the nightmare horrors of Phos. The album was recorded in a single session in late 2017, and while it must frustrate musicians to ‘sit’ on an album for close to three years before its release, Phos is the perfect soundtrack to 2020. It is amazing that it reflects so much of what has become of us and our landscape, our fears and our confusion.
The improvisation on Phos is patient, much like Sheen, but Phos is more dynamic. The depths are greater, the textures are built upon a frequency that lurks beneath. There is a quality that is present here (but hidden) that Sheen did not possess, and that is fear and ultimate loss. Incantatory Sentience has a radiating quality to it, like buzzing bees and flies, or wet powerlines. There is a hint of a rhythm that attempts to rear its head, and the clarinet is used very well. Corpuscular Refraction is disintegrating and developing simultaneously. Built on a simple idea that sound accompanies the creation of a life, and a breath ends a heartbeat. The piece possesses a Dub like section that is really cool, again stepping outside of anything that Sheen swam in.
Empathic Predatory Biome sounds like an alligator stalking its prey with occasional electronic terror filled screams. It is a section of sound that becomes a film, it is visual in every sense of the word, requiring the listener to write a script. The track titles were inspired by the 2018 film Annihilation, which spent some time on Netflix. It was a good film that is well worth seeking out, not necessarily for the standard performances of Natalie Portman or Oscar Isaac, but for the gripping alien zone. The time the film spends in the shimmering zone was thoughtful, and suspenseful, and at times gruesome. Yet, all too often the film became bogged down by the presence of the human condition. Themes of grief and loss weighed things down to Earth, flashbacks of betrayal were predictable, and the conquering fascination that goes with trying to understand something that can not be understood was tiring. Phos does not suffer the same pitfalls.
The spoken word section on Empathic Predatory Biome is shorter than the piece used on the final track of Sheen, but nonetheless more powerful. Here the male voice recalls the meat grinder of war, its gripping fear and suffocating grief, and the emotion that mirrors the objective of Phos. It is the climax to a remarkable piece of art that you need to give yourself away to. Approach Phos with one foot behind the other, one eye closed and one eye open, and a willingness to exit in a different headspace than when you entered.
Tracklist
1 - Therianthropic Procession
2 - Incantatory Sentience
3 - Corpuscular Refraction
4 - Pathogenic Panspermia
5 - Empathic Predatory Biome
RELEASE DATE: August 7th, 2020
https://kayodot.bandcamp.com/album/phos-pre-order
