Genre: Drone / Dark Ambient

01 Rise and fall
02 From the face
03 Coming this way
04 Cooler then thou

I am walking in a dark cave. There are two sources of lights I can see. One from the flashlight in my hand and one, much dimmer, from the far end of the cave. I can hear my footsteps echoing the wet and solid walls of the cave, along with the sound of dripping water, found somewhere inside this cavernous space. I am walking as fast as I can without actually running, and at the same time I am trying to analyze why these tiny sounds of fresh water drops and my own footsteps are making me so nervous. Maybe not afraid, but definately not calm. The sound of my own two legs makes me so uneasy because its echoes are drawing the shape of this long tunnel in my mind. The sound of the water dripping with such a monotonous rhythm are like stalking footsteps that are always behind me. I do not need the lack of light to tense up the enviroment. Thses tiny sounds are more than enough. But how come? What makes these tiny sounds spark my imagination so much?

Mystified has been recording material since 2003 and releasing it in many different albums.On "Phantoms", Thomas park, who is behind the musical project, is conjuring ghostly images through these seemingly background sounds that gain power, focus and mometum and become the foreground. His cave, if you will, is shifting phases between a dense and cold bubble, where soft background noise echoes itself until it becomes almost unbearable through its countless mirroring, as in the track "Rise and fall". As hisses of wind combine and collide, a much more solid wall of sound is born. My mind races on through "From the face" as this great entity of sound, composed from millions of tiny fragments of high pitched shrieks is closing in all directions. Then comes these drops. Slow and drumming drops of water are heard and serve as tiny sparks in the great dry wheat field. The horizons of this massive shrieking wall are expanded violently with every sound of water drop, until the question if what I hear are footsteps, drums or merely tiny water drops becomes irrelevant. "From the face" leaves my blind inside a dark and burning space until it slowly fades out.

On "Coming this way" the harsh hisses moves back to the background and give way to huge and slow bells of droning rings. The ability to distinguish the foreground from the background can give a calming feeling of orientation and the knowledge that you know your way through this foreign space. But after a short while on "Coming this way", the background and foreground shift and mix. Leaving the listener lost in the foreign space that Park has created for him or her. In the climax of this confusion, the track ends and gives way to "Cooler than thou". The sounds are much more open and might give the impression of an opening. I picture myself getting outside the cave. The hisses were waves, but I'm still in the dark, hearing these towering bells from time to time. It's endless and suggesting that I might never see home again. Never come to where I have started this journey. It tells me that in small soothing pulses that I find among the harsh waves and I yield to that notion and just stare and listen to it's infinity. And then it's gone. And I am standing in silence.

Get this small album. It's an impressive journey and a great aural adventure. I am going to get some rest.