CD Feature/ In Meditarium: "Mare Internum"

If the USA are the natural home of Hip-Hop, then Russia and many of the Western and Eastern European nations must be the most obvious feeding ground for Dark Ambient and Industrial – simply, because Industrial Culture in the original sense of the word still exists there. Looking at the pictures on the official “In Meditarium” homepage, you will immediately understand what I mean: Rusty steel nettings, decrepit concrete and somber corridors lit in neonlight – no wonder so many are getting beautifully depressed. Still, “Mare Internum” is a different affair.

Not in the sense that these two brooding pieces were music to clap your hands and shake your booty to. But it has to be noted that Oleg Kolyada and Sergey Svistelnik of the “Ukrainian Dark Syndicate” have taken their bleak message to another cosmos for this, their third release (which follows in the footsteps of two limited CD-Rs on Polish and Russian labels). One which is more supple, less frightening and less suffocating and allows for just a little more breething space. And talking about “Space”: B-Side “Regina Silentia” seems to travel all the way to Arthur C. Clarke’s Jupiter, on its mission to follow the monolith’s call, drifting like a hybernated astronaut in a distant planet’s tractor beam. A deep analogue bass line provides harmonic guiding, opaque choral mutterings radiate in spectral colours and the sails are set for an unknown harbour. Terrifyingly majestic. “Regina Solitaria”, meanwhile, sounds like a faintly glowing, cloud-covered horizon as seen from the periscope of an unmanned submarine. Inside the cloud, self-aware structures shift and conflate, releasing energetic impulses. From afar, a solitary sonar blips and deep rumblings struggle for the surface. The overall impression is less one of sadness and eternal solitude, but rather of uncertainty and surreal statics – all hope is not yet lost.

Despite their hermetic nature, these tracks seem to sprout from the same seed  - like snapshots from different corners of the same planet. As so often with “Drone Records”-releases they appear to be too short at first, only to release their magic after repeated listenings. Soon you’ll find yourself flipping sides like a drunken man in hypnosis, one step deeper into the labyrinth each time. As long as it still breeds music as evocative as this, you’d almost wish for Industrial Culture never to disappear from Russia.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Drone Records
Homepage: Ukrainian Dark Syndicate / In Meditarium