Austrian dark ambient duo Wach (aka Reverend Kim and Herr Insomnia) first emerged onto the European dark electronic music scene in 2007 with their debut album The End Of All Dreams on Klangfeld Seuchentrieb, a release that was ultra-limited to an absurdly tiny run of just 30 copies, each hand-wax sealed into a leather pouch. While the duo have both been active with a slew of other musical projects in the meantime, this second album Firedance On A Dead Man’s Grave on Beverina & War should hopefully see their music reach a few more listeners, with the run being extended to 300 CD copies this time (the first 100 packaged in a handsome DVD case). As for the seven tracks gathered here, the sonic content is primarily composed around eerie dronescapes, subtle digital processing and distant treated samples, the entire aesthetic calling to mind the vast yawning void of space, or perhaps a post-apocalyptic desert landscape as sandstorms tear their way inexorably through.
Opener ‘Kyrill II’ calls to mind the sort of atmospheres Ridley Scott might use to soundtrack his latest Alien sequel as the crew slowly rouse from hypersleep and distant treated horn elements murmur against what sounds like the relentless rush of pressurised air and the monotonous background hum of machinery. ‘Frenzy’ ups the intensity a few notches against doomy two-note synth patterns that almost call to mind Goblin, shortly before the entire track descends into growling detuned noise as grinding background mechanical sounds compete for space with the synths as they breakdown into tortured tones. ‘Flammenmanifest’, meanwhile, represents the real epic offering here, coming in at 22 minutes and sees the debut working with a broad canvas that stretches from the opening distant burble of rattling motor-like textures into majestic brass, before venturing on further into unsettling ambience and more shearing noise-based textures before its end. It’s also accompanied here with its own enhanced CD video section. While ‘Firedance…’ perhaps doesn’t exactly show Wach pushing the established dark ambient genre template to its very limits, it still shows the duo applying lessons learned from the likes of Lustmord and Muslimgauze to strong effect.
Chris Downton
