Sky Burial is the first of three proposed albums from Echtra which are going to make up the projects ‘Passage Cycle’ and explore the “dissolution of the mortal coil.” I guess if you have ever had the misfortune to sit with someone and watch them die you can probably relate to this more than if you had not done and there is no doubting that there is something very spiritual when life is extinguished, leaving in essence a dead husk behind. I believe it is this and as is stated the “grappling with the inevitability of one’s own death” that Echtra are looking at representing in musical form here. As far as the project itself is concerned I realised on researching that the soul musician behind it is also one half of Cascadian elementals Fauna so having immersed myself in their excellent ambient journey ‘The Hunt,’ I had something to formulate the sound on here.
There is perhaps more going on here although it is still a fairly minimalist trip of the senses. Acoustic guitar patterns that are both lush and feel completely organic take up the main frame of this recording. They sparkle and glisten as they uncoil and they immerse you into their arms with a repetitive and transcendental caress as things slowly build up. The album is divided into two parts but these seem nothing more than to represent the composers Illuminati fixation with the number 23, both being 23 minutes long. One look at his past three releases shows that all three of them are similarly comprised (although Metal Archives has the second segment on his 2011 release ‘Paragate’ listed at 22:59, which no doubt has pissed him off no end). Really though it is easy to look at this as one complete piece of music without division.
It is on the whole instrumental and apart from unexpected ethereal chanting coming through very occasionally you could forget all about the vocals. There is a feeling of energy processed by some of the backing parts which has me thinking of (in light of the subject matter) souls rushing towards that finite white light which we are all inevitably, if you believe so, drawn to at some point. It is on the whole calming and the sort of stuff you can totally immerse yourself in for the duration and it is an album I have found myself drawn back to like a moth to a flame. The gorgeous guitar work literally babbles away with some softer, gentle yet urging tones in the backdrop also catching attention and all of a sudden ¾ of the way through the album we suddenly hit more of a peak as drums flutter away and electric guitar cuts in. This has a sort of post-rock feel to it rather than anything else and it is literally as though fireworks or explosions in the sky are suddenly going off and the mind now is drawn towards a myriad of colours.
You have to wonder if it would be possible to bring this off live and what it would be like to experience. Apparently if you get the full release rather than the digital one I am working from you can find out as it comes with a bonus DVD of the acts only ever performance of this piece back in 2008. As spoken word vocals now come back in as I listen and review I am very much in a zone and transfixed by this (for want of a better phrase and not wanting to come across as pretentious) piece of art. For the moment I can only wait expectantly for the next two parts of this and check out the links to past works below.
(Pete Woods 8/10)
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