anduin

Forever Waiting

Until now best known as a member of experimental band Souvenir's Young America, Jonathan Lee of Richmond, Virginia makes his solo debut as Anduin with some considerable style. The tone of 'Forever Waiting' at least partly subscribes to certain aesthetic conditions that could be classified under the dark-ambient banner, but there's nothing here that wallows in the cloudy, post-metal atmospherics you might tend to associate with that increasingly popular sub-genre. Instead, Anduin's music permits a little light into all that shade, and while 'Rain Cloud, Storm Cloud' and 'Reason In Exile' prove impermeably bleak and muffled, elsewhere even the most sinister and downbeat passages of 'Makepiece in Pieces' are leant some modicum of brightness and accessibility thanks to piercing, reedy tones. In the album's latter stages the sound palette is broadened considerably by the recruitment of Jasper TX and Xela as remixers. The former's 'Reason In Exile (Part 2)' is produced with all the skill and craftsmanship evident on his recent Black Sleep album for Miasmah, combining a mighty sub-bass drone with beautifully filtered guitar phrases, all lovingly mangled and blurted out of the Jasper TX digital blender. Next up, on 'For Francis Bacon (Part 2)', is Boomkat's very own screaming pope: John Xela, blending unnervingly angelic falsetto with shortwave interference during the early passages only to unleash the full might of his noise generators in the latter stages, when all hell breaks loose. Eventually, the demonic squawking abates to reveal a murky, yet very melodic guitar progression, with more shadowy vocals floating around in the far-off distance. Deeply engrossing material = Highly Recommended.