øjeRum | Without Blood The Sun Darkens
Cyclic Law (CD/DL)
Paw Grabowski presents an incredible limbed (wings and arms) analog collage to contemplate over the course of Without Blood the Sun Darkens, under his moniker øjeRum. The run time, just under an hour, provides a cryptic expanse within which to lose the outside world – to darken one’s mind and hesitate. The sweeping melody which opens the composition sets the mood which I can’t enunciate more articulately nor more accurately than, ‘a profound venture through melancholy.’ Through an uncoiling and recoiling swath of space and held tones, the core of the piece is certainly minimal and ambient – the title offers more foreboding than any celebratory suggestion.
Having lost all sense of time while listening, I had to check my media player – and just around minute sixteen, the melody opens up even more than before. It’s as if there’s a disintegration at work and the dronish undercurrent almost eclipses the melody. I find myself holding my breath a bit; then recalling that it’s time to breathe again and taking a large full inhale. I believe in the physiological power of music to affect us chemically. In this piece, one can expect to find lowered blood pressure and increased dopamine. The result: a calm and a focus, sobriety.
Released by Berlin’s Cyclic Law, the suggestion of humanoid interspecies mingling with the insectoid moth in the collage cover art makes one consider what a cocoon might involve for such a hybrid creature. The instrumentation imitates this cross-over projection; there are organic strings mingling with keyed tones. At times, the bass rolls feel like neon Gregorian chants – the essence preserved as meditative, yet lined with electronic slivery synth. Theoretically, the composition itself may serve as the listener’s metaphysical shell.
Through the process of being absorbed in the temperate musings of the music, one undergoes a metamorphosis. Still, the process isn’t one of growing wings. It is more grounding and anchoring. One can picture still water, a dragonfly hovering. What seems to be suggested is an introverted perspective. The concept presupposes the presence of both blood and sunlight while exposing that the mitigation of the former diminishes the latter. Over the spellbinding hour of concentration that this composition invites, one comes to certain terms with mortality and it couldn’t be offered in a more peaceable and palpable manner. Thus, with a complete listen, one is left beside themselves with a shed ghost of the incorporeal.
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