Joachim Andersson calls his Protoplasmic Reversion project „Semi-dark ambient for a calm and slight discomfort", striking an unusually moderate tone in a genre which often excells at exagerated claims of who's more desolate, desperate and depressive. The music, however, is no half-hearted affair and instead leaps directly at your emotions in a wholy cruisade for beauty.

The opening title track is programmatic in this respect, a majestic beam of light falling on the overgrown walls and towers of long-forgotten kingdoms. What distinguishes Andersson's music from that of most of his colleagues is its breathy airiness, its natural insistance on romantic melodies and its ethereal translucence, inviting listeners to astral voyages and motionless travelling. It is almost, as if he'd been smart enough to bring along a torch while roaming the well-known lands of uncertainty and blackness.

And yet, these „Sunken Temples“ are destines to perish again, rising up from their million-years-old place of refuge for nothing but a short glimpse. Drawn in by their irresitible, lustrous exterior, Andersson fights his way in through fallen rocks and climbing plants, uncovering ever more bizarre structures as he advances. „The Old Place“ has already shed most of the palace's shining quality, sending choral voices through the ether and „From Beyond“ is a muffled prayer sung in an ancient tongue.

Even though the mood does get more and more unreal in the later stages of the album, it never looses its ethereal tone. Part of this can be attributed to the fact that „Sunken Temples“ is a texturally pure work, which puts all emphasis on the immediate „musical“ elements, instead of cluttering them with several layers of reverbed and delayed microtones. This allows Andersson to develop his compositions in a much more subtle way, sometimes merely adding solitary streaks of consonant notes, howling wind or discreet crackles to build up a premonitious tension arch, which always ends in silent resolutions instead of hymnical finales.

The cavernous thirteen minutes of „Slight Discomfort“ are the exception to the rule, a dislocated, archetypical Dark Ambient soundscape, which is however quickly followed by the sensually distorted two-tone theme of „Scorched Earth“. It is almost as if our protagonist wants to show his audience that he could produce less surprising works – if he wanted to.

Instead, he has opted to work on something personal and distinctive, while never loosing sight of the bigger picture: Protoplasmic Reversion is a storytelling project, which conjurs up vivid images from the pages of its wordless book. Paradoxically, even though stylistic cliches are missing from its chapters, the deeper you are drawn in, the more disturbing these images get. The reason for that lies in the psychology of Andersson's music: The listener's mind complements the darkness, adding one's own fears instead of those of others.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Protoplasmic Reversion
Homepage: Reverse Alignment Records