Rating: 9.5

Country: Finland

Release Date: 2004

Record Label: Aural Hypnox

Track list:
1. Ast unTA AKSElin
2. VARJOutoMAA
3. JoenukkuMA-A lue
4. KulKU ISKA AJAn alla
5. PuhdASTRAALIvalo
6. MAgneTisOitUNut aIval
7. TULVI Alas keESIIN
8. AURAsh
9. SiE LUs tO


Band Website: Halo Manash

Halo Manash - Par-Antra I: Vir

Anti Ittna H. – Text, vocals, chanting, e-bowed guitars, bass, analog synthesizers, samples
Iwo Hoccuc – Shamanic percussion and cymbals

To most people reading this site, Anti Ittna and Iwo Hoccuc will probably be most familiar for their work with doom metal act Dolorian, but there is another (though perhaps closely related) side to them. Being part of the Helix-Locus collective with their Halo Manash project and heading the Finnish label Aural Hypnox (on which are gathered related acts like Aeoga, Zoät-Aon and others), the two are masters of extremely dark and hypnotic, ritualistic ambient.

Just a gander at their range of instruments up above will already make clear that Halo Manash do not make your average dark ambient. Calling it ritualistic is not merely an empty descriptor, for Halo Manash makes music meant for meditative absorption and contemplation. There is a very profound esoteric concept behind the music that is elucidated in the evocative large booklet which contains the actual cd. Within the book and upon its cover can be found a large sigil containing in symbolic form the name of the whole work as well as the nine sigils which represent each of the nine musical pieces which make up the whole. It is said that intense contemplation of each of these symbols during their corresponding tracks, followed eventually by understanding of the whole symbol, will reveal the secrets of VIR (Latin for Man, so the secrets are about the self) and facilitate a spiritual transformation.

The actual music which will take hold of your senses is made of a backbone of soft, almost tribalistic percussion, with various layers of deep chanting and harsh whispers hovering in and out of hearing. The e-bowed guitars and analog synths provide the rest of the musical soundscape, employing a very wide range of effects, from shrill feedback piercing the darkness, to eerie synthetics hovering above the soundscape like a cold wind and oscillating drones weaving their way throughout the record. Reverbed echoes, background walls of static and ghostly otherworldly noises add to the picture. And it is indeed like a musical picture, or indeed symbol, with the percussion and enveloping void providing the black backdrop on which the spectral synths, cutting guitar distortion, echoing wordless chants and a whole host of analog noises and samples draw thick, white three-dimensional lines forming the occult glyphs, with the occasional indecipherable whisperings forming the jumbled letters spelling out alchemical secrets, if only they could be unraveled.

The whole is really one long progression and while actual melodies are few and far between (though snippets of melody do pop in from time to time in the most unexpected places) there is a sense of melody permeating the whole work, becoming clearer the more one is absorbed in it, being carried along by symbolic lines of the instruments through smooth rounded loops and jagged, harsh turns of the three dimensional world of the sigil contained within. It is very easy to get lost in this work of art, constantly shifting and changing its shape following some inner logic that must be discovered by each individual listener, though some may become too unnerved to continue, since this is very dark and haunting music.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if some people achieve a measure of enlightenment (these are white, glowing lines coming through the darkness) while listening and meditatively contemplating the symbols, braving the outer/inner void on a voyage of discovery, listening to the dread words embedded within the fabric of zero-space and before-time, to come out a changed being. If this sounds at all like a worthwhile experience, do all in your power to get this, since this is already becoming an exceedingly rare release, and it is very, very recommended (like everything released by his label). There is practically nothing quite like this.

July 7th, 2007