Some music comes from a clear and easily defined place. It fits into genres and expectations neatly; it sounds similar enough to something you have heard before that individual comfort zones remain unruffled, and the listener never feels particularly out of their depth. That might be fine for some, but for me, it is the music that takes you to new and undefinable places which gets me out of bed in the morning; after all, who wants to hear another bland boy band or a bunch of indie rock chancers, pop wannabes or cliched rock and rollers when you can listen to something that goes somewhere new.
Car’lyeh, Shunya Cassius‘s new album, is a collection of music that goes somewhere new. Individual musical building blocks may be recognisable, but as always, it is the sonic architecture built from these that is key. The sonic architecture forged here is awesome—and also otherworldly, dark and delirious, claustrophobic and coiled, melodically menacing.
Sometimes, clues to an album’s themes can be found in the artist’s bio and backstory, but with neither readily available, it is to titles that we music look at, and even those don’t give much away. The fact that the album contains the name of a lost Lovecraftian city – R’lyeh or that we have words like ontological, hinting at a metaphysical direction, is about all we can garner at this point; it best to dive right in.
The opener, “a dream come true,” is a dense blend of nightmarish sonics, the soundtrack to Dante‘s descent into hell, and this blend of horror-infused sound sets the perfect tone. “layers of the machine” might introduce new elements, namely vocals and beat, but there is still and industrial-infused madness to the track.
By the time we get to “Shattered Frames,” it is obvious that this isn’t an album that just gives the listener more of the same. In fact, it is hard to describe what it gives the listener, which is its dark charm. It is music infused with madness and meaning, music that defies definition.
“decomposition” is full of the same latent terror that we heard in the opener, music that seems to be more a horror story distilled into sound than a song; it is the sound of us meeting Arthur Machen‘s Great Gods, the sound of us descending the stairs beneath Jeff Vandermeer‘s mutated Southern Reach lighthouse, the sound that heralds the awakening of Lovecraft‘s One Ones.
It is a mercurial album, one that could be described more as sonic statements than songs in the traditional sense. Occasionally, Shunya Cassius strays near a more recognisable song form, such as with “Spectres within the lattice of silence,” but even then, it is too experimental and adventurous to have reference points in the mainstream world.
Whatever you make of this strange, often fragmented, always beguiling album, I can guarantee you will not have heard anything like it.