Schloss Tegal “Black Static Transmission” CD Cold Spring Records
Enter a world of occult and derelict atmospheres that gives a new understanding to the sheer force behind dark ambient noise. Exploring the themes that revolve around the subject of the anti-world, the place where time runs backwards and alien transmissions have been sent to us to decipher and understand. Richard Schneider composes seven magical noir transmissions divided into two parts with the assistance of MW Burch and En Llewellyn. In the first set of planiospheric compositions we encounter off-world transmissions with static apparitions of lost souls and knowledge of what’s to come. Massive drones grate your mind while fierce and menacing voices attack from all sides, swirl about when we enter this surreal plane of existence. Shadowy voice excerpts are slowly captured and recycled while deep bass sub-sonics pulse into you veins like oil. Repulsive psychotics and unsettling screams churn into your brain while thunderous terrorizing percussive elements wander about the maze you are lost in. You become entangled and traumatized with various foreboding entities as you move through the chaos. Charred and thick barriers lead you slowly out. And the intensities break down to the mechanical and opaque passageways, ending the first 22 minutes of the cd. In the second set of planiospheric fields, we engage abrasive lo-fi bass modulations that set the base for this mysterious environment. The modulations are broken with more dense barriers and messages that accelerate you deeper into this invisible world. Lost signals and codes tap your senses. Rotating mechanical undertones submerge your mind even further displaying erosive tendencies. Eventually various shrieks, cries, and warnings start to give us insight to the transmissions. All things become surrounded by beautiful feminine chants that evoke depressive feelings and leave us with an introspective ending to the 42 minutes of insight from the very intriguing composer. This release encourages me to venture more into this musician’s work; "Black Static Transmission" proves to be another powerful work of dark ambient, building tortured soundscapes similar to dr. blood of ah cama-sotz. Do not overlook this one, you might regret it.
From Zero Tolerance
Schloss Tegal “Black Static Transmission” CD Cold Spring Records
THIS was my very first introduction to SCHLOSS TEGAL, despite having heard a great deal about them over the last few years. Born in the heart of Kansas during the early-1980s, this deranged brain-child of Richard Schneider and Marc Burch takes its name from one of the first clinics specialising in the treatment of mental illness. Not simply from a therapeutic perspective, however, the centre was also used to induce psychotic debilitation amongst the enemies of the Third Reich. Meanwhile, The beastly choir depicted in the CDs interior artwork is amazing. I’m not sure who the artist is, but it resembles a macabre blend of Hans Holbein and William Hogarth. This recording is based on the stellar transmissions which are constantly being sent from what Schloss Tegal describes as the hidden Anti-World. But this is a process which most people are unable to perceive, not least because the medical establishment has waged a bitter campaign against natural remedies relating to magnetic aura. This, it is argued, is achieved by transforming human information receptors into thalassmia, or low levels of haemoglobin in red blood cells. Despite the fact that the CD appears to contain a total of seven tracks, it plays in two lengthy sections (forty-one and twenty-one minutes respectively). The opening rush of wind swirls like a murmuring Kansas tornado, with samples elaborating upon strange voices that arrive completely unheard but which can subsequently be heard on tape minutes later. This is achieved by using white noise generators, from which the captured voices can extracted electronically. The sounds themselves are Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP), samples from the world beyond. Ghostly rumblings which transmit personal information to the recipient. The samples used on this CD range from the scientifically human to the harrowing and the unknown: “Beyond the universe a light glows”;. The result is a sonar cacophony of unexplained and fluctuating baggage, affecting the ears in the way that darkness and horror can affect the eyes. At times the EVP samples appear so indulgently sinister that it is difficult to ascertain whether the typical reaction should be one of fear or curiosity. Unlike a lot of Dark Ambient recordings, the minimalist approach is distinct by its very absence and a busy and varied collection of themes function as a highly eventful musical sub-plot. There is always a great deal going on. A rippling series of posthumous booms and slumps to occupy the enquiring mind. Emissions for the inquisitive. Conversational overlap for the serious eavesdropper. Listen to this in a darkened room and you’ll be tempted to reach for the light-switch. At one point we hear something resembling the hurried swish of black helicopter blades, almost as though one is being caught red-handed whilst being exposed to a great secret. A secret that the powers-that-be wish to keep latent and suppressed. Towards the end of the CD we hear a mixture of English and American accents, as the samples beneath degenerate into a screaming torrent. A nightmare soundtrack for Dante’s Inferno: Let the night roar, because they can hear us. This is dead-air in the fullest possible sense. Pure class.
_Troy Southgate