Album Review: The Haxan Cloak - Excavation
- Written by Rob Freeman
Music without vocals is often lazily labelled ‘cinematic’ because the emphasis is often on story-telling with sound. Bobby Krlic’s latest Haxan Cloak album, Excavation, shies away from the narratorial aspects of his debut though, and his shift in record label accompanies a shift from telling an abstract story to provoking an abstract feeling. The story is stripped back, and all that remains of the ‘cinematic’ aspect is an immanent trajectory towards the end, an arc. Whereas debut album Haxan Cloak feels like an extended chase leading to a denouement; Excavation doesn't really involve any forward movement at all.
Despite percussive, regular rhythms, these rhythms switch and shift uncomfortably, layering on top each other. Although a beat normally marks the passing of time, the sounds of analogue instruments pitch-shifted and strangled through digital filters stymies any progression. A repetition of motifs - beeping, thumping, ticking, muttering – and their distortion and wrong-footing creates a timelessness like a skipping record, as the character that met her end in the final refrain of Haxan Cloak begins a journey through ether in Excavation, outside of time, in another place.
The de-tuned D that ends Bobby Krlic’s debut resurfaces as Excavation’s opening note. Rather than the expansive soundscape of creaks and rattles that populate Haxan Cloak, the instruments have been ground up and forced through a computer. A ghostly, electronic moaning hums over the top. The opening note is stretched and squeezed, a distorted chorus of violin rises, becoming louder until it climaxes (or anti-climaxes) in a gigantic thump. Everything stops and a cavernous, drum beat begins, dropping the listener directly into the negative space between the beating.
The nine tracks of Excavation are stuffed with instrumental horror motifs – chanting, rising discord of violin – and along with the de-tunes and the dropping keys, such tropes often contribute to the overarching description ‘Doom’ music. Particularly in Krlic’s case, this is the main reason he is mentioned in the same sentence as sunn 0))). Krlic is obviously a fan, and there is certainly a wordless dread permeating the album. At times the chanting and chattering becomes just as unnerving as any horror film, but the aim is not to unnerve, rather to transport. Instead of bringing his audience down into the depths, Krlic is furiously wrapping an unearthly orchestra around it - one would do well to remember that the album’s title does not refer to going underground, but bringing something up from below.
P.S. Use headphones.
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