Mystified - Passing Through the Outer Gates
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First Fallen Star label serves us a kind of unusual concept of musical journey: Passing Through the Outer Gates is the first album of Eulogy Series, which is nothing but the artists’ ‘soundtrack for their own death’. An ambitious, untypical and controversial subject, that means being exactly the way a dark independent music searcher would probably look for. The name Mystified unveils Thomas Park, a well known artist among dark ambient spheres, i.a. having collaborated with Rapoon or Nocturnal Emissions. The album Passing Through the Outer Gates is a reflection of a trail of gates which a spiritual self passes through on its way to the afterlife. It seems to be the trail shrouded in byronic mist, leading between shadowy gothic structures, which may be alluded by a cover itself.
Each of the eight tracks is a passageway into another stage in the journey through the beyond worlds. The path through dark ambient unrest and drone blocks seems to create spatial tunnels formed into ensuing tracks. The atmosphere of some dark anxiety persists throughout the whole album, being suddenly interrupted from time to time by raw drum beats or orchestral samples taken straight from classical music. It’s a great way to evoke very elevated, even apocalyptic mood which suits the elected concept ideally. But when you listen to it for some longer time, all this bombasti and monumentality becomes slightly overpowering.
To me the record appears to sound a bit like a soundtrack to an RPG game, maybe it’s because of a strong feel of synthetics, digitalization of sounds. Or perhaps it just doesn’t harmonise with my idea of the immaterial part of human. I don’t know how much Thomas Park’s soul weighs, but this recording simply sounds too gravely to outline something ethereal, enigmatic, being practically completely undescriptive…
Tracklisting:
01 Eulogy For Thomas Park
02 Dark Transition
03 Lost My Body
04 Up Down Or Out
05 Approaching Something
06 Soul In Motion
07 The Final Gate
08 The Soul's Resting Place
Each of the eight tracks is a passageway into another stage in the journey through the beyond worlds. The path through dark ambient unrest and drone blocks seems to create spatial tunnels formed into ensuing tracks. The atmosphere of some dark anxiety persists throughout the whole album, being suddenly interrupted from time to time by raw drum beats or orchestral samples taken straight from classical music. It’s a great way to evoke very elevated, even apocalyptic mood which suits the elected concept ideally. But when you listen to it for some longer time, all this bombasti and monumentality becomes slightly overpowering.
To me the record appears to sound a bit like a soundtrack to an RPG game, maybe it’s because of a strong feel of synthetics, digitalization of sounds. Or perhaps it just doesn’t harmonise with my idea of the immaterial part of human. I don’t know how much Thomas Park’s soul weighs, but this recording simply sounds too gravely to outline something ethereal, enigmatic, being practically completely undescriptive…
Tracklisting:
01 Eulogy For Thomas Park
02 Dark Transition
03 Lost My Body
04 Up Down Or Out
05 Approaching Something
06 Soul In Motion
07 The Final Gate
08 The Soul's Resting Place
