Genre: Dark Ambient/ Post Industrial/ Neoclassical

Track Listing:

01 The Process
02 Protoscience
03 Samarkand
04 Tetraphobia
05 The Golden Mean
06 Retroduction
07 K-Shaped
08 Projections
09 Synkemina
10 Introspection

The process of aging brings many changes; amongst the more common are the emancipation from the spirit and the meekness from the body. With these two come the most radical facet from the life of man, the entire flagrant ever mettlesome attitude from youth appeases and the certainty from his own judgements loosens off. Within the context of art this may be easy perceived in the solidity given to the work, the clarity it may transmit from its ideas. Ambivalence disappears and its replaced by scrutiny and the enhance from the technique, meanwhile experimentalism reduces considerably and its relegated to grant practical contours and unconventional frames to the work. The final delivery is serene but definitively sharpened with the edge from wisdom and experience. This is the kind of thing one may perceive after listening the side project from Beyond Sensory Experience Mr. K Meizter. “Tetraphobia” is the fourth album that presents Mr. Meizter working independently after a previous split with Horologium and it does resume its well achieved experience and emancipated aural beauty. All the expertise acquired through large years of sound experimentation, texture exploration and distillation from ideas and concepts finally brings the equilibrium of an almost perfect concatenation of facts and achievements that grants this album the epithet of grandiose.  

“Tretaphobia” is a concept album with some latent content on esoterism (associations with powers within nature and the powerful symbology implied in the quaternion from elementals) and at the same time it does bring a philosophical conundrum on the relation from the human psyche with the wholeness from universe and the dimensional complexity from reality. A place where the individual is a mere particle dominated by terrible forces that completely escape its control, of an environment that is complex and irregular and overturns perception and leaves no absolute as reference, or at the very least, no other probability than the one that comes from chaos as represented in Totality. Tetraphobia or the fear from the “quaternity”, the analogue infinite related with alchemy is an album about fear, the fear of wholeness.

Dimensionally speaking the album really deals with infinity; aural immensity is reflected in its often ominous passages, ceremonious pace and despaired mood and all this experience is transmitted by an amalgam of semi orchestral movements articulated both organically and synthetically, mysterious drone layers and muffled voices, subdued metallic clangour and slow beats, cymbals and kettledrums fluently lapse in parsimonious procession like rhythm. The semi melodic and atonal movements marked by the slow transcendence from the beat resembles like a march in the space time continuum and a ceremonial trance at the same time. Take for example the first two tracks: “The process” comes with its labyrinthic doom induced rhythm with slight reminiscences from a rhythmical accompaniment based on Blues music and joined by this somnambulistic atmosphere so utterly spleen and desperate. The elongated transit from the drums marks this piece of the characteristic atmosphere and ominous latency that the general work transmits. Meanwhile “Protoscience” takes a more sophisticated approach and opts for a quasi Trip-Hop cadence though exactly following the same rhythmic pattern from the previous track in its relentless ceremonial slowness. This album brings subtle reminiscences in style and form from –His Divine Grace- and –Mondblut- with perhaps some Neo-classical, the delicate stillness and detailed atmosphere full of dark contours and grandiloquent elements, its often mystic solemnity and the arrangements that continuously intertwine the organic with the synthetic, the instrumental passage with the electronic ornament and the melody with the cacophony certainly match as good points of reference to compare.

All tracks presents variety and alternative creativity, always compelling new aural strategies to seduce the listener in its journey. “Samarkand” for example reveals some semi martial clangour centred on this opulent wind section accompanied by this desolate atmosphere of phantasmagorical chorals as usual demarked by a slow tempo dominated by spatial clangour. Then to the sophomore title that dedicates to investigate organic textures joined with somber drones and subtle samplers spread all over in elegant display of somber beauty. Or what to say about the electrifying “Retroduction” that dares to play with a solid analogue synth sequence to construct some hybrid that elegantly mixes an Electro like feel with Ambient and tribal pulse. The variety is always present, captivating and seducing, maintaining the compound of glorious darkness that the work condense. Complexity and dynamism sort well during the transit of the work, never losing the listener during its trajectory and granting the solidity that comes from a work destined to be important and eloquent. “Tetraphobia” as a whole poses the aesthetics and direction that one can find in the roster from Loki Foundation, its seriousness and dedicated effort to bring authentic climax and original texture, unique perception and thematic that grants the work a very particular sound and aesthetic that is hard to achieve in a genre that has abused so much its own paradigm.

The orchestral mix and use of guessed right samples and drone layers or synthesized ornaments gives the music an impacting clarity that results definitively original and maintains the listener immersed over its sinister cinematic. Meizter surprises with its amalgam of textures and variations and his distance from the clichés and generic stagnation. The style, grace and fineness from this work could only have had come from a mastermind and a experienced soul, not only in musical changes but in life, the process of aging has certainly given a good amount of artistic integrity and originality. Highly recommended album!