Cabal

I featured Matrioshka Brain's last album here. I praised it's creepy vibe and ambient feel, saying it was full of "negative vibes." Their new album, entitled Cabal, makes me embarrassed to have afforded such shallow compliments. This album blows their last album out of the water. It is a release that is creepy, yes, but also very much mysterious. It's "vibes" are not negative, but murky, possibly even soothing in a whistling a lullaby whilst walking through a misty woods kind of way. This is not an experimental album to throw on and do house work to and it is not an experimental album to listen to with headphones on and a glass of wine in hand. This album really grabs you and really makes you think about its purpose and it's overall message.

The group describes this albums music as "devotional" but what religious observances or rituals it is meant to accompany is unclear. The album art, drawn by one Aleister Crowley,  features a large-headed humanoid staring melancholic towards the viewer. Is it an alien? A spirit? No. It is Lam, an entity Crowley held dear. Even the band name, a Matrioshka Brain is a hypothetical computing system, is ambiguous. The song titles are radiance, saudade (meaning a deep sense of nostalgia), and sepulchre (a misspelling of a word for tomb). It doesn't get more esoteric than that. Maybe I'm a sucker but it drags me in and piques my curiosity. I want to know how these, possibly unrelated, ideas connect.

Musically, the album is droney, noisey ambient. It is very chord based, often pretty, but always unsettling. It would be somewhat unremarkable if it weren't for the synth tone. It sounds like a haunted game boy being used to conjure a spirit. It's incredible.

I might be the victim of an insincere group of people using meaningless occult and metaphysical imagery to sell their music to gullible power electronics fans but I don't care. I'm recommending it anyway.

Stream/Buy it here: http://matrioshkabrain.bandcamp.com/album/cabal