EVENING OF LIGHT
Beneath The Lake is an ambient project by Dave Canterbury and Nicolas Lampert from the USA. This is their second album, released in the fine trademark 6x6" digipaks of Glass Throat Recordings. This packaging features a beautiful photograph by Nicolas of overgrown remains of civilisation: power lines covered by plants, standing alongside young trees. This theme, the meeting of nature and culture, is also expressed in the music, which combines melodies and man-made electronics with samples of both the natural world and civilisation.
"Empty City", the opening track, is a mixture of samples of highway, city, and (apparently) sheep, overlayed with gentle electric guitar melody and recorder. The chord progression is perhaps a bit simple, but it fits the melancholic, yet desolate theme of the album. I think the project is at it's best in the more ambient pieces, though. "Fire & Rain", as the title suggests, is based on samples of those two phenomena, combined with subtle soft melodies. When you think of it, it is quite obvious, but the sound of the rain and the fire goes together perfectly.
On "Silent Uprising", and especially the extensive "Chasm", a purely ambient sound is displayed, which the band also pulls off very well. Samples of locusts, horses and meadow are integrated with deep drones and effects. While the reference to the themes expressed in the layout and choice of samples remains clear, the music itself also creates a space and feeling of its own, as should be the case with good ambient music. In this case, it's dark, unsettling, yet also natural. Perhaps an accurate, if abstract, interpretation of our world, and the way man interacts with its surroundings. The final track starts off gently, with the antithesis of wind samples and a warm drone. Later on it turns slightly darker again, and then it ends with melancholic guitar chords, much like the first track started.
This is a very pleasant and rewarding album of ambient music that makes good use of samples and melodic embellishments. Besides that, I found the theme, as expressed in approach and artwork, powerful and interesting. The melodies make this album slightly more accessible, and it is suitable for both background and attentive listening. So unless you are an absolute minimalist when it comes to ambient, this is an excellent and recommended album.
JUDAS KISS
Beneath The Lake is a Wisconsin-based duo consisting of Dave Canterbury(also of Wage Class Slave and Dust) and Nicolas Lampert (ex-Noisegate), and Silent Uprising released in 2005 on the Glass Throat label owned and operated by Chet W. Scott (Ruhr Hunter, Blood Of The Black Owl) is the pair's second album, following their 2002 debut Inside Passage, also released by Glass Throat.
Inside Passage was a drone-based ambient exploration of the natural world, but with Silent Uprising, Beneath The Lake have shifted their attention towards the points of interface between human culture and nature, specifically the processes of encroachment and reclamation that occur when mankind retreats and nature returns to a site – the "silent uprising" of the album's title. It's an interesting theme, and one which the duo explore with the aid of field recordings as well as acoustic and electric guitars, keyboards, synthesizers, recorder and acoustic percussion.
The album contains five lengthy tracks for a total playing time of 69 minutes, with each track fading out on a single drone note which then forms the beginning of the next piece, so that the entire album is a seamless listening experience. "Empty City" opens with the sounds of a distant train departing, blended with abstract, indistinct sounds of city bustle. Over this, a gently plucked, warm and resonant guitar and soft wooden recorder notes float, evoking in simple and repetitive melody a melancholy atmosphere of dust bowl desolation. The sleeve notes for Silent Uprising state that an environmental recording of sheep is used on "Empty City" as well, but I'm not sure exactly how or where, the track certainly isn't full of obvious sounds of bleating. The blend of organic instrumentation and natural field recordings invites comparisons to Beneath The Lake's label mates Ruhr Hunter and The Elemental Chrysalis, with repeated recorder phrases mimicking the cries of lonely birds, but there's also a Western, desert feel to "Empty City", akin to some of Neurosis' acoustic work and the Hex album by Earth.
In the last couple of minutes of "Empty City", the melodic instruments disappear, fading into a steady muted roar which diminishes to a low, ambient hiss, which in turn leads into "Fire/Rain" (no relation to the James Taylor song "Fire And Rain"). As the title suggests, the background field recordings used here are crackling flames and the quiet, steady hiss of falling rain, with some rumbles of thunder and the sounds of a rattlesnake and an owl as well. Like "Empty City", "Fire/Rain" overlays these sounds of the natural world with simple guitar phrases, but the overall mood is slightly darker, perhaps because of the destructive threat implied in the sound of flames, and is reminiscent of ambient pieces by certain black metal projects such as Hate Forest, Burzum and Vinterriket.
Thus far, the drones used by Beneath The Lake have been quite organic and mostly rooted in nature, the drones which appear all around us as the backdrop to everyday life, the sounds of distant traffic, the ocean, the wind and the rain. However, the album shifts, with the title track "Silent Uprising", towards colder, more obviously synthetic drones. The melodic instruments such as guitar and recorder are entirely absent, whilst muted electronic beats detonate like depth charges in the deep, reverberating soundscape. A field recording of buzzing, rustling locusts provides the only connection to nature. This track seems like more conventional dark ambient, similar to Sleep Research Facility, Beyond Sensory Experience or some of Nordvargr's work, and I must admit I found this much less interesting than the album's earlier tracks, which really have a distinctive atmosphere to them.
"Silent Uprising" gives way in turn to "Chasm", which is at 22 minutes the longest track on the album. "Chasm" continues in the drone-based ambient mode established by the previous track, again without guitar or melodic instruments, but rings the changes (literally!), by introducing sparse and precise progressions of shimmering gong tones, and, around the 15-minute mark, a delicate gamelan-like concatenation of metallic hammering, giving the track an exotic, ritualistic feel which reminds me of projects like Chaos As Shelter, Hati and the Aural Hypnox bands. I prefer this track to "Silent Uprising", but still it doesn't seem to fit naturally with the pattern established by "Empty City" and "Fire/Rain". The sleeve notes indicate that this album was recorded over a six-year period, between 1998 and 2004 – it would be interesting to know which parts came first, since it does feel as though Beneath The Lake's interests and approaches have evolved over that time, and the end result is an album similar to what you would get if you took material from the early Ruhr Hunter albums and interspersed it with their later work, as that project has also moved from cold, abstract drone ambient towards work that is much more firmly rooted in the natural environment.
The album's closing track, "Blind Inspiration", emerges from the reptilian slither of shifting layers of drones which concluded "Chasm". Warm, steady tones steadily build, offering a redemptive comfort after the chilly bleakness of "Chasm". Slow respirations and a distant howling wind fill the background, and "Blind Inspiration" also offers a reprise of the sound of city and highway found on the album's opening track. A steady, minor-key repeated note creates a feeling of menacing unease, but around the halfway mark of this 14-minute track, this gives way to the return, after being absent for most of the album, of the guitar of the first two tracks, which has an instantly cheering effect, like the sun breaking through clouds after heavy rain. In the elegiac, dying moments of the song, the guitar melody is picked up and repeated by a keyboard, before the melody fades away into the background drones, and the album draws to its conclusion.
Silent Uprising's central theme of the interface between a decaying and exhausted human civilization and the remorseless claims of nature is beautifully encapsulated by the cover art of the album, which is presented in one of those 6" by 6" gatefold sleeves which are a Glass Throat trademark. Printed on matt card in wan and faded sepia tones, the outer sleeve shows a house and telephone pole, tilting and abandoned, covered with thick veils of choking vines as the natural world encroaches to reclaim the territory mankind has ceased to defend. The inner sleeve shows a city skyline, buildings and telephone lines punctuated by trees. How soon, you're forced to wonder, before the buildings crumble and fall, and the trees grow to cover the wreckage? The photographs, taken by Nicholas Lampert, are a wonderful visual counterpart to the music of Beneath The Lake.
When I first moved to Birmingham, the city centre was undergoing major reconstruction, and for several years there were building works going on. One of the minor railway stations, Moor Street, was closed for a couple of years, and passing by it every day, I marveled at how quickly nature returned. Birds and bats nested in the roof, trees grew up between the rails, weeds, grass, ivy and wildflowers covered the verges. I'm sure there were foxes, mice and rats in there too. Then they cut everything down, painted and restored the building, and re-opened the station. Too bad – it was a beautiful ruin. But nature is patient, and one day all our cities will be abandoned and covered in foliage, as surely and completely as the ancient Buddhist temples hidden for centuries in the dense jungles of Angkor Wat.
MUSIQUE MACHINE
Beneath the lakes second album finds the Two piece project mining ambient and gloom filled guitar drones and guitar repetition. Mixed with dense environmental sounds, with organ and other Instrumentation to pick out the more melodic elements. Coming off like a darker version of Biosphere guitar tracks on Substrata or like more Environmental and less cowboy freindly version of Earths more rececent material.
For the albums 70 minutes runing time your locked into its slow moving tones, enchanted by it's slowly appearing and dissolving audio worlds. Environmental sounds and recordings are very much a part of every track, possible playing a bigger part in making the atmosphere and depth of the tracks, than the more traditional musically elements. They are weaved deeply into the material, you feel there's a real ear here for making these work on their own level and not just as an after thought. Giving the music a real picture quality- if one was to shut your eyes, you'd feel like your drifting over dusk crawling in, vast land scapes empty of mankind's buildings and trappings or maybe hovering over grey seas as last the sun rays glimer on the water. This is music to settle into its sound world-headphones in place. Ready to let the tones and sounds take you away. I can't really choose any stand or favourite tracks, as this really works best in its whole 70 minute form, you just have to dive in and full submerge your mind in its dark and often haunting and beautiful oceans of sound. Yet another rich sound world from the great Glass Throat recordings.
AVERSIONLINE
It's been quite some time since I encountered anything new from Beneath the Lake, but this full-length sees the duo of Dave Canterbury and Nicolas Lampert once again creating a rather lengthy journey into experimental soundcapes using electric and acoustic guitars, samplers, synths, organ, electric piano, recorder, rain stick, gong, hand drums, floor toms, and various effects. These compositions were recorded over the course of six years, so some of this material even predates their 2002 debut in one way or another, but the end result is fairly similar in its blend of subdued musicality with often sinister dark ambient undercurrents. First up is "Empty City", one of the more musical selections at 13 minutes long, relying heavily on recorder and hypnotically pulsing guitar chords/notes above the abstract field recordings. 12-minute "Fire & Rain" opens with a few minutes of samples of crackling fire before subtly thick low-end and sparse sustained notes start to join in and everything gradually fades over to blend the fire with samples of rain as the lush notes start to return in altered form with watery reverb effects applied to add density and movement. These samples carry over into "Silent Uprising" - which, within a minute, has transformed into a despondent mass of resonating ambient tones that's quite encompassing. Several minutes in a lightly crunchy sort of percussive surge starts to create a rhythmic pulse as the drones thin out and layer a sizzled midrange hum with some powerful low-end throbs. "Chasm" is then the longest track at a whopping 22 minutes, though sadly I don't really care for its initial wave as the drones used are... well, I'm not sure what word to use. They're not cheesy, but something about the sounds employed on some of the layers just rubs me the wrong way and kind of clashes with the generally more organic and restrained flow here. Unfortunately it's not until nearly 12 minutes in that a dark ambient style starts to overcome and win me back over, but not for long, so... as a whole this track simply isn't very enjoyable to my ears. A shame since it's so damn long! "Blind Inspiration" follows and opens on a windy setting that also takes a stark turn towards more ominous territory minutes in, with slow paced guitar chords coming at around the eight-minute mark to start a slow rise and fall towards the closing fade. The disc comes in a matte three-panel 6" x 6" digipack with the disc secured to the center panel on a foam mount, and all of the printing is done in brown ink for a minimal, consistent appearance that looks quite nice. No text is used on the front cover, so the entire span of the outer packaging really highlights the beauty in the dreary setting - much like the music, which sort of finds solace in a strange sort of bleak, hypnotic lull. I'm not as overwhelmingly intrigued or moved by this disc as I was by "Inside Passage", and as mentioned, for me "Chasm" is a bit of a blemish here, but by and large this is a nice disc that continues the group's knack for crafting warm, organic experimental soundscapes that convey their environmental influences well, while creating chillingly suggestive atmospheres in the process. And that's what counts for the most here. Nicely done.(7/10)
Running time - 69:55, Tracks: 5
[Notable tracks: Empty City, Silent Uprising]
AURAL PRESSURE
Nicolas Lampert and Dave Canterbury's follow up album on the debut disc, "Inside Passage" continues their aural theme of meshing the natural as the basis of their dark ambient foray. Theirs is a pageant of forgotten memory and haunted byways, landscapes wreathed in the decay of humankind.
"Silent Uprising" sees a more instrumental inclusion in the album than in "Inside Passage" yet what melody there is remains minimalist and far from breaks Beneath the Lake's dispositions. With the first track, "Empty City" one is roused from the natural wilderness of their first album into the urban wasteland, the clash of machine and delineated roar of roads is hushed by poignant guitar and wind instrument that unveil dust swept streets and gutted hollows of skyscrapers who are in turn swallowed by the inchoate urban remnants. "Fire & Rain" spits and aspirates flickering flame and heaves a steady stream of gas thrumming instable. Guitar once again paints somnolent notes upon an increasingly voluminous pressure building beneath until the fire consumes itself and thunder unleashes downpour that is difficult to unravel from the sampled flame prevalent throughout and mirroring the fire movement, guitar and melody uplift the mood a notch before the rains part. The namesake track of the album invokes a minatory haze blushing with moaning drifts and rasping macroscopes that plunge the listener into a netherworld of electronic phrasing and oscillating structures crowded with specters entreating the spectator further into the noise runnelled abysm. The longest track, "Chasm", urges boreal winds lacerated with the electronica and scoring noise of the previous track before a nightmare in the gloom swims frantic and tense passages disorientating and maddening. Entrenched in twilight, "Blind Inspiration" whistles mordant shards that lash the cantilevered walls assailing the listener who loses grip and plunges deeper and darker where sound deadens until there seems little egress. There at bottom of the internal gulf guitar lifts the listener in a final moment of reprieve.
Uniquely and gloriously presented, "Silent Uprising" is printed on a 6" x 6" six-panel card gatefold design with the disc recessed in the folds. Desaturated ochre is the dominant colour and the entire artwork and package continues the artistic theme of their debut album, vestigial images of landscape and the boles and fingers of autumnal trees.
CRUCIAL BLAST
A truly stunning follow up to their debut 2002 "Inside Passage" offering! Comes packaged in a gorgeous oversized gatefold CD sleeve, professionally printed and covered in somber, earthy browns/greys and woodland/urban decay imagery... Awesome!
AQUARIUS RECORDS
This is record number two from Beneath The Lake, whose first record from 2002, Inside The Passage, was a huge hit around these parts. BTL is made up of Nicolas Lampert, who was one half of Oakland ambient terrorists Noisegate, who released two records on Andee's tUMULt label, and Dave Canterbury who is a fixture of the noise underground performing as Wage Class Slave. Beneath The Lake is a project based on creating soundscapes combining minimal ambient music and found sounds, with an emphasis on composing the music to compliment the sounds instead of just using the sounds as a backdrop. Where their first record focused more on nature, Silent Uprising shifts the focus a bit more toward the increasing influence of the urban landscape as cities continue to encroach on nature and change the balance forever. The record begins with the clatter of trains rushing past, the receding sound of the train is soon joined by a simple strident guitar riff, accompanied by a mournful wooden recorder. The two drift and shift and slowly build in intensity. Very reminiscent of Neurosis at their most mellow, surprisingly enough. The riff shifts and twists, shadowed by the recorders melodies eventually being joined by the sound of another train and eventually being drowned out by the roar of the wheels on the tracks. The second track is a simple, gorgeously melancholy guitar melody, slowly and deliberately picked, over a bed of crackly static that could be either the sound of rain falling or the crackle of a fire, or both. The sound on Silent Uprising is much more musical than on Inside The Passage with the drone being relegated to just one of many instruments / approaches as opposed to the very dark and slow shifting all encompassing drone of the earlier record. Here, it's -that- guitar, all dark and shimmering and reverberant, and the brooding slow building melodies that creep across the sonic landscape. It sometimes almost sounds like the slow core of Low being performed in a steel mill or a rail yard, the band struggling to be heard over the sound of rain and wind and trains and passing cars. Strangely powerful and poignant. Packaged in a gorgeous oversized sleeve with breathtaking images of winter foliage and urban landscaapes, printed in all muted browns and tans. So lovely.
HEATHEN HARVEST
BENEATH THE LAKE is Nicolas Lampert & Dave Canterbury, a Wisconsin project that had already impressed me with the raw natural ambience of their 2002 debut "Inside Passage." Haunted drones are punctuated by recordings of wild animals and the elements to create a pretty unique and intense sound, a difficult feat in the oversaturated world of Ambient.
On this follow-up, the duo add a more musical dimension with melodic, reverberating guitar parts, a fusion which slightly reminds me of their label mates THE ELEMENTAL CHRYSALIS. The pacing is slow and deliberate and the sounds appear and disappear fluidly. The cover is a fitting symbol for the nature of this album, for it shows an old house and electrical post being engulfed and chocked by vines and foliage. The elements and essences do indeed rise up silently against man's vulgar encroachment and usurpation, and this album is a perfect soundtrack.
Like the ELEMENTAL CHRYSALIS CD, this release clocks in at over 70 minutes and comes in a handsome oversize folder with a little nub to hold the CD in. Consume this product now!
THE UNBROKEN CIRCLE
Over time we are growing the range of music covered at this site beyond folk into sympathetic areas such as instrumentals which are made around landscape and nature. GlassThroatRecordings have for a few years been one of the leading labels specialising in this area of music. Much of this music used to be tagged "dark ambient" or some such other phrase which doesn't capture at all what the music is really trying to do. Here we have a band called Beneath the Lake with their new album on the label. The band consists of Dave Canterbury and Nicholas Lampert who make instrumental soundscapes that evolve in an organic way, always with a sense of melody and structure. Their music often weaves into it field recordings and sound processing which takes it purely from being mood music into evoking the imaginary landscapes their music travels over.
The first piece here is "Empty City" which seems especially relevant in light of current empty cities in the USA due to hurricanes. We hear the sound of very distant traffic and quiet metallic shifts at the start. After a few minutes a plaintive, lonesome electric guitar melody begins to play with slow flute notes in the background. It sounds impossibly lonely and is allowed to be almost static. I was immediately reminded of artists like Labradford, Explosions In The Sky and Godspeed You Black Emperor. However whilst those bands often incorporate rock dynamics into the music, this band instead concentrates on building a mood over a sustained period of time. After a while the guitar ends, to be replaced by a hymn like mood of synths and organ. Siren likes calls of blown flute and chiming electric guitar chords emerge adding drama, calling us back to the city. Eventually the music recedes, only the sound of air movement remaining, no signs of human life, the city empty.
As the first piece fades out the second fades in providing a seamless transition into "Fire and Rain". This starts with the sound of fire joined by rain and solitary synth notes drifting in the oppressive air. Droning electronics sit in the background to the music. For a while all we hear is the fire and rain before clusters of electric guitar notes, echoing add cloud drifts. Although created electronically this piece sounds ancient, capturing something of the stark existence of pre-history humans. The feeling of being entwined with the land and the weather is powerfully evoked.
Next emerges the title track "Silent Uprising" which is a particularly minimalist drone of glacial electronics. The movements here are achingly slow, almost imperceptible. In any moment it sounds like machine noise and air but slowly it changes and music becomes more apparent. This piece then evolves further with locusts and layers of shifting chords and an unsettling breathing sound. It feels claustrophobic and uneasy which is only increased when a ghostly melody enters. This then evolves as more layers of electronics enter into a huge, almost discordant orchestral crescendo.
By far the longest track at twenty two minutes is the fourth piece "Chasm". Here we have tense droning notes which become pure glass bells in a section of calmness. For a while this becomes a huge buzzing sustained drone before reducing down to just the heavily processed sound of a meadow with crow like calls from electronics. Over its length the piece goes through dramatic shifts of mood and complexity, having a dream soundtrack like quality. "Blind Inspiration" is the final piece which blends slow synth chords in with rising and falling wind. About half way through a guitar plays patterns which evoke memories of the first track and slowly we are returned from the bleak wilderness towards the city and the sounds of distant traffic once more.
Many artists are superficially making music in this area but few achieve the fusion of natural and electronic sound so well, creating their own mood and resisting the urge to over complicate the music. Intuitively the music seems to fit the musical interests we have at the site, from the stylisation of the CD sleeve to the music which is not only about landscape but seeks to become part of it.
ISTHMUS
Since the dawn of the industrial age, the relationship between nature and man has been uneasy at best. It's that volatile struggle for dominance (which we all know nature ultimately wins) that inspires the second CD by Wisconsin audio sculptors BtL. A five-track, 70-minute fusion of field recordings (fire, rain, highway...), processed tone-streams and ultra-minimalist guitar melodies, Silent Uprising creates atmospheres both placid and turbulent, allowing the listener ample headspace to consider the ramifications of the machine/earth conflict. Terrific stuff!
GROOVE.NO
Svart Land...
I seks år har Nicolas Lampert og Dave Canterbury arbeidet med materialet til Silent Uprising. Det merkes at disse to tar seg god tid, og det kommer også til uttrykk gjennom den særs stemningsfullt mørke musikalske reisen de her inviterer oss med på.
Beneath the Lake har base i Black Earth, Wisconsin (et sted med et slikt navn kunne jeg flyttet til usett) som høres ut til å være den rette plassen for å bygge denne typen kontemplerende lydskulpturer. Ved hjelp av samples og feltopptak, samt gitarer, tangenter og mer vindskapende instrumenter, produserer Beneath the Lake musikk som gjenspeiler både naturmystikk og urbant forfall, menneskeøde og varme/skjønnhet. Det skjer gjennom langtrukne melankolske melodilinjer, et vidstrakt og detaljerikt lydbilde og en paradoksal organisk/industriell bekledning av mer forstyrret art. Her er det mulig å tenke band som Thuja, House of Low Culture og Labradford som relativt nærliggende referanser.
Omslaget kan fungere som en direkte innfallsport inn i musikken. Her vokser den tette, høstkledde skogen vilt, de menneskeskapte sporene (stolper, mørke hus) virker forlatt. Det er naturen som har overtatt der mennesket har spilt fallitt. Silent Uprising et inntrengende dykk inn i midt-vestens mørkeste områder, der dype skoger møter rustfarvede byer, der hemmelighetsfulle stier krysses av nedlagte jernbanelinjer. Det bør også nevnes at platen er utstyrt med et meget delikat jordfarget cover, formet som en mellomting mellom en syvtommer og CD i størrelse.
Lekkert innpakket og lekker i innhold, det er mye å lytte til på en plate med fem spor over 70 minutter. Mest innbydende er nok Empty City med sine mange hule klanger med mye gitar-delay, forblåst slettemark og ekkoet av tog som tøffer i bakgrunnen som frakter oss inn i en nedlagt industritomt. Gitarstrekkene er også tilstede på Fire & Rain, og skaper et visst system eller en progresjon som det er mulig å følge ganske lett. På andre spor opphører disse og med det også retningen mot tydelige melodilinjer, til fordel for mer abstrakte og lydmalende kulisser bestående av urolig skraping og okkulte nattriter. Det kan være vel så effektfullt, selv om det ikke alltid gir en like umiddelbar opplevelse. Nesten 25 minutter lange Chasm blir slik en meget dominerende og ubehagelig sak som krever full mental oppmerksomhet for å komme til sin fulle rett og dermed også ta del i de sfærisk dvelende og skjønne elementene som også er en del av bandets uttrykk. Mørk ambient er vel en passende beskrivelse på dette, vil jeg mene.
Av de to musikerne har Nicolas Lampert den mest spennende bakgrunnen. Han underviser i Milwaukee, og er for øvrig kjent som collage-kunstner der han, i viss likhet med denne musikken, blant annet knytter sammen deler av dyr og maskiner i sine arbeider. Han har også en mer politisk holdning. Som skribent har han engasjert seg som motstander av krigen i Irak (han var medredaktør for boken Peace Signs: the Anti-War Movement Illustrated, 2003), og han er en av grunnleggerne bak det radikale og politisk engasjerte mostandsnettverket Drawing Resistance (drawingresistance.org). Igjen er det verd å merke seg mengden av slike tenkende undergrunnsgrupperinger med utspring i USA, som knytter bånd mellom kunst, musikk og samfunnskritikk. Kollektivt ansvar og kreativ motstand basert på samlende nettverk virker å være nærmest fraværende blant mer likegyldige norske artister. Markedskritikk og globaliseringsansvar er liksom ikke noe vi trenger å bry oss med her hjemme, eller...?
Denne duoen har dessuten bak seg platen Industrial Passage fra 2002 inspirert av hvaler, vann, ulver og vind i Alaska - sikkert verd å sjekke ut den også. De kan i så fall begge bestilles fra den fine Seattle-labelen Glass Throat. Sjekk ut, dere venner av ugler og mose.
