Genre: Dark Ambient / Ritual Ambient

01 Cycle I Santur Rising
02 Cycle II Circle of Dreams
03 Cycle III Le Cycle du Soleil Noir
04 Cycle IV Circle of Desire
05 Cycle V Sunur Descending
06 Cycle VI The Enemy Within
07 Cycle VII Phoenix

This is a split collaboration between :Golgotha: & visual artist Birthe KlementoWski

This curious release by the recondite Golgotha is a remix of an original CDr EP that was served as accompaniment to a published postcard set by photographer, Birthe KlementoWski, in 2007 by Ikonen Media. The music featured by Golgotha was an inspiration to the sumptuous grain of KlementoWski’s film but has been remixed and developed for a wider audience than the very limited edition of ten discs.

Set to seven parts, delineated as cycles, Golgotha continues its ritual ambience of previous albums, but with a more relaxed pace inflecting their steady processions with visual stimulation. The tracks tend a landscape of echoic spaces broken with softened zooms, fomenting hypnosis and repose, idling and drifting palliating breezes. Whereas KlementoWski’s imagery is of the natural world gloomed in shadow and muted vibrancy, Golgotha take the time to inject the work with vocal samples and hymnal passages that call back to terra firma any droning flights of  fancy.

Rippling percussion thunders and rolls with stomach churning frequency but steps slowly as metal drums summon circular motions to palpitate and subtly unease. It is a primal yet sacred setting of hoary flutes tracing contrails as the natural chaos of the wind snakes, rustling chimes as much as it throats wind instrumentation. Tension is moved with swollen crescendo and release by evanescent decrescendo. Despite the congeries of vocal samples, choirs of throat-singing, and other human vociferations the album promulgates an emptiness of humankind, more a forgotten shrine in an empty glade shrouded in mist rather than a fane actively supplicated by followers.

Fantastic production and detail for three-dimensional space leaves Cycles as an intimate experience best taken leisurely and coupled with the photography makes for a memorable product.

A soft matte digipak with a gatefold sleeve, Cycles, is a delectable design enhanced by the lush macro-photography and landscapes from German Birthe KlementoWski. The twelve page booklet is glued to the interior of the digipak and retains a turquoise bloom throughout, with the natural world captured in close detail, rich in chiaroscuro, fronds and thorns, the fingerprints of leaves: ghostly close-ups.