Premiere: Venus Invicta – The Star of Išhtar

Having already found much to love in the dark, pagan-infused gothic-folk of Ada Sargatis‘s solo work, The Star of Išhtar feels like the welcome next chapter of a sonic story I am already heavily committed to. Joining Sargatis in this new duo is guitarist Andrei Ushakov, with other contributions coming from session musicians and collaborators.

Continuing to explore the primal roots of society, our folk tales and fears, and our own ancient perceptions of who we are and where we come from as a people, they walk dark sonic paths and open ancient portals to look for answers to such deep questions.

As was the case with Ada Sagartis’ solo work, genres and musical styles give way to feelings, and it is moods and emotions that seem to dictate the nature of the songs more than sonics and structure. This is music of the liminal spaces, a sound emanating from the borderlands between the now and the then, the what was and the what might have been, music that rises up from places where the past and the present share space and time.

The title track opens things up, a tribute to the resonance of ancient hymns written in Cyprus and recorded in an ancient space in St. Petersburg, Russia; it feels as if all the duo had to do was create music that harnessed the weight of the history found floating there rather than make music in a conventional sense.

Made of the Fire follows, cascades of finger-picked guitars and sensual vocals are subsumed by an explosion of tribal drumming that sounds like the pulsing beat of the earth, which in turn deliver us to a soundscape of anticipatory electronic washes and slashes of cold and coiled guitar.

Not that musical reference points are easy to come by when talking about a band such as this, but Queen of Dust reminds me of Sisters of Mercy’s difficult second album, Floodland, a blend of stark beats and pulsing bass lines just enough to tether the splintered sonics and shattered sounds that dance over and around them.

Drowning is a hymn to the waters that the ancients believed were the portals between worlds, again a song of fractured musical forms drifting under the direction of the musicians who are less making music than conjuring sounds like sonic shamans. This mysterious EP ends with Северный ветер (Northern Wind), sung in Russian; it is suitably intangible, at least to us on the other side of the language barrier, a song with more space than music, more atmosphere than structure and the perfect swansong, a beguiling and unique track to end a beguiling and unique collection of songs.

If you like to live in a world where music poses more questions than answers, where artists are much more than entertainers but are educators and illuminators, enlighteners and acolytes, where songs can feel part of the very fabric of the world that we live in and resonate with us, pulsing along to our own most ancient of heartbeats, then The Star of Išhtar will become more than mere music for you, it will become the soundtrack to life itself.