Sumatran Black
Elegy for a Lost Cosmonaut E.P
It’s clear pretty much from the jump that the astronaut on the cover of the new EP from the Turkish label Sumatran Black is in some kind of trouble. He’s just sort of hanging there, in close-up, against the deathly blackness of space. Whatever ship he took to get out there is nowhere in sight. The three songs that comprise this EP perfectly capture that feeling of sickening desolation. Sumatran Black describe the music they release as “Necro Chill,” and that pretty much nails the vibe. Album opener “The Mission” starts with a long, deep drone, gradually layering an extended, smoky, three-note synth melody. They extend each note for what feels like an eternity, and the fact that the song evolves so slowly only adds to the feeling of chilling isolation. On “Is This Heaven? (это рай)”—I’m going to guess the answer to that question is “Nyet”—high, keening notes extend far into the horizon, spilling across the song as slow as morning sunlight. The title track is by far the most chilling: there’s a blur of static in the background, and then a sustained orchestral swell that gradually pitch-bends into something sickening and uneasy. They repeat this pattern again and again—coming back down to the calm stasis of the crackling tones, then introducing the strings all over again. It feels like the awful internal cycle of panic, calming down for a few moments, then remembering your situation and panicking all over again. Sumatran Black say their music is designed for “contemplation”; they never tell you that what you’ll be contemplating is “the void.”
-J. Edward Keyes - Bandcamp Editorial Director
A Page of Madness - A Sumatran Soundtrack
Soundtrack to A Page of Madness, directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa. Commissioned as part of SALT Galata's Sounds of Cinema performance season. April, 2018.
I know some people are interested in what synths and gear I use and so on this project everything was done in the box with a bunch of different VSTs: Omnisphere (especially the granular function), Arturia's DX7 clone, Serum (melody at the end of the score), Psychic Modulation, Novation V-Synth and Iris .
Fathomz
• A brief introduction -
By the time I had finished preparing the tracks that would become the album In the Dread, I had already recorded a number of ideas that I was happy with but simply were not suitable for that album. There was something slower, deeper and more abstract about these pieces and for whatever reason I was consistent- ly drawn back towards them.
And so over the course of winter 2016, as I made my twice daily ferry trip across the Bosporus, I looked out into the dark and often rough waters, and listened to the hum of the boat engine as it accompanied the sketches of what would become Fathomz.
1. Hydrolyzation of Protein Peptide Bonds –
For a track that took a relatively short time to write and record, and that has a short running time, this track took an eternity to mix. I was never happy with the guitar sounds, the fades, the reverb. I changed one thing and then everything else seemed wrong. But I always felt that this song created a very unique atmosphere and it kind of exemplified the emotional tone I had in mind for the whole album concept. When I was experimenting with different track running orders for some reason it just sat so well at the beginning for me. I felt it had a wooziness and intoxicating flavour, like you’re being drawn into something and its ultimate consequences are unclear.
2. There is No Solidity –
This track sums up the writing and recording process for the whole album, which happened to occur when I was switching over to a different recording system. Recorded first in Garageband, transferred to Ableton and then mixed and mastered (with some additional parts added there). As this track was developing I could sense the whole project was moving away from the Black Metal influence of In the Dread into more uncharted musical territory.
3. Fathomz -
Fathom
1. a unit of length equal to six feet (1.8 metres), chiefly used in reference to the depth of water.
2. understand (a difficult problem or an enigmatic person) after much thought.
The intro is actually guitar played through a synth pedal on the much-maligned Pod Farm system. In fact, I used the pod system to record all the guitar parts on In the Dread and Fathomz because it was all I had available. I’m sure guitar heads would be disgusted if I told them the necro guitar sound on In the Dread was a guitar going through the Pod Farm’s Hyper Metal pedal simulator (an imitation of another much-hated piece of equipment) and nothing else. No amp or cabinet simulation. Just some extreme EQ and added reverb.The outro is a mixture of some underwater sounds and “singing sand dunes”.
4. Descensus -
A journey.
5. Incremental Dosage Increase -
Not wishing to repeat myself I decided to think about different guitar tones after recording In the Dread. I wanted something watery but not spacey, open but not clean, distorted but not abrasive. You can also hear the same guitar tone on Benzos. The version on the album differs very little from the originally posted on Soundcloud.
6. Biologics –
A dark interlude.
7. Discipuli Saturnus –
An organic sounding piece made using a whole bunch of digital trickery. Including FM synthesis, granular synthesis, sampled electric pianos, guitar amp simulators and various spring reverb emulators and delays.
8. The Box –
What’s inside?
9. Benzos -
I guess you could call this a sister piece to Incremental Dosage Increase.
I remember listening back to this piece on the ferry journey home and it really started to solidify what I wanted the musical direction and tone to be for this album. This track also made me realise that for the album to work musically I would have to use the “necro guitar” parts in a subtler way (and in many cases remove them completely). The original Soundcloud upload had an ambient drone piece as the outro, this was removed and given its own track and name...Whiteout
10. Whiteout –
I guess if you call an album Fathomz you know that it’s probably going to feature copious amounts of echo and reverb. I wanted to achieve some dirtier and less digital reverb sounds on this album so a lot of spring reverbs were used. Whiteout is such a piece.
11. Sort Sol (Black Sun)
Sort sol (black sun) is Danish the name giving to the dark silhouettes caused by starling swarm behaviour. I was sat in the office at work when I saw it happening. Amazingly, I had never seen it before. The whole song came from the electric piano sound. It was dark but organic, kind of unsettling. Everything was built from that one simple electric piano part.
12. Der Maschinenraum
One of the things I wanted to achieve on Fathomz was try and add some low frequencies to my sound. In the Dread was heavily scooped and intentionally had a blanketed and distant production style. With Fathomz I wanted to open up the frequency range a bit more. Der Maschinenraum is one of the tracks where there are some hefty sub frequencies.
13. Subaqueous Ideation -
One of those rare instances where the track was written, recorded and edited in very short time. It all seemed to click. It made me feel, something. When I was thinking about the track running order, this was pretty much an immediate choice for the end of the album. It had an elegiac feel to it and seemed like a nice musical full stop.
• The Drowned and Marooned - footnote
If you are interested in learning about the whole album writing, recording and editing process you can of course contact me at:
sumatranblackrecords@gmail.com. Also I recommend taking a listen to the Soundcloud playlist “The Deep” which features the unedited versions of the tracks here plus some other things that didn’t make the final cut.
• Credits:
All music by Sumatran Black © 2017 Peter Reeves
Cover photo “Whirlpool (2)” by Dean Ducas © 2017 Dean Ducus
https://www.flickr.com/photos/deanspic/
Special thanks to Gelare, Rob (SeeSafari), In The Void (Turkey), Michael at This is Darkness, David Paganin, Hazal Elif, Dean Ducas (again)
+ Daniel Davidson, Sezin Özkılıç, Daniel Book, Silent, Gunnar Kjellsby,
In the Dread
Minimalist Dark Ambient Blackness - Necro Chill
"We are your sons, we are your husbands and we are everywhere..."
Instructions:
1. All works of Sumatran Black have been created and designed to be experienced on headphones and not speakers.
2. Sumatran Black encourages you to enjoy these works while walking at night or lying down in darkness.
Written and recorded during 2016 in Istanbul, Turkey.