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Lingua Fungi - Tlapallan Pantonal


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My first encounter with a project named Lingua Fungi occured on the occasion of a split entitled 'Strange Growths Wander' that was created along with Shrine. There is no denying that I got interested in "The Fungi" merely because of Shrine as I simply had never heard about Jakkoo Padatsu before. It did turn out that I missed out on quite a piece of interesting tribal/neofolk ambient, which might bring associations with the works of Chöd or even more atmospheric pieces of our Polish [haven].
The album ‘Tlapallan Pantonal’ perfectly fits the above description, treating us alternately to cold ambient and a small bit of neofolk, filled with acoustic sounds (a real masterpiece of the record), everything served with a tribal sauce, which makes the compositions' taste truly interesting. The sheer taste reveals itself only in the second part of the majority of the tracks, which were composed in the name of the principle - "ambient introduction - tribal ending" ('God on a Raft of Serpents and 'Those Who Spring Forth' appear to be the only deviation from this rule). Such a compositional configuration made me feel as though I was walking through a spacious cave only to end up in front of a fireplace surrounded by a bunch of witchdoctors, weaving one of their stories accomapnied by half-deafened rumbles of drums of their tribesmen. It should be by all means emphasized that the drums do not resemble the ones of Sephiroth, tearing along incessantly, but they comprise pleasurably subtle sounds, whose job is to fill up the atmosphere created by the ambient background, which job those drums do just right.
A myth about Quetzalcoatl (which is a title of one of the songs) constituted an inspiration that accompanied the overall process of the album's creation, yet I found no reference to the culture of Mezoamerica in the music itself (still, I would not call myself an expert). If there exsists such genre as, I beg your pardon for such a phrase, 'ordinary ritual ambient', then the release of Lingua Fungi fits it perfectly. And even though some of the compositions are of the same theme, it gets lost somewhere during the listen, becoming yet another element of the whole entitled ‘Tlapallan Pantonal’.

Tracklist:

01 God On A Raft Of Serpents
02 Smoking Mirror
03 Teonanacatl
04 Quetzalcoatl
05 Brujo Calling
06 Those Who Spring Forth
07 Tlapallan
Author:
Translator: murd
Add date: 2011-12-09 / Music reviews


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