http://www.crucialblast.net/skyburial_transmissions.htmlSince the dissolution of his long running power electronics/harsh noise project Fire In The Head, New England noise artist Mike Page has gone on to focus on his other project Sky Burial, which had long existed as a "softer", less violent side of Page's musical work. The first time that I heard Sky Burial was on the self-titled disc that he released on Housepig sometime around 2006, and was impressed by the vaguely menacing drone rock experiments and dark ambience that was featured on it's six tracks. In the last couple of years, though, Sky Burial has evolved into a much more distinct sound that while definitely less confrontational and abrasive as his work with FITH and Irukandji, is still plenty dark and malevolent, a kind of sinister cosmic bliss-out that brings together his obvious love of classic 70's space music and krautrock (Tangerine Dream, Popul Vuh, Vangelis, Klaus Schulze, Cluster, etc) with an undercurrent of grimy, apocalyptic industrial dread. Being a huge fan of both dark industrial and old-school kosmische music myself, I've been getting more and more into Sky Burial's music with each new release, and when C-Blast received a copy of the new Sky Burial album Transmission From The Void to check out earlier this year, I was sucked in to it's glazed black-nebula ambience instantly. Consisting of a single album-length track, Transmissions is one of the darkest pieces of cosmic drift that I've heard from this project so far, it's nearly forty-five minute runtime constantly moving through clouds of intercepted radio signals and distant rhythmic grinding into clusters of gorgeous synthesizer drift that ascend into the stratosphere, then crashing back down into blood-freezing stretches of infernal machine-drone and swirling abyssal ambience. Shutting the lights off and cranking this thing up on a good stereo transports you deep into an unearthly realm where beautifully blissed-out cosmic drift is laced with moments of mechanical horror, strains of symphonic sound, murky piano and distant strings are threaded through black swarms of distressed electronics, and mysterious vocal incantations and metallic reverberations rise like smoke-trails out of bottomless lightless chasms in the earth. It's like a strange mixture of seething industrial music muted by an all-encompassing Lustmordian darkness, strafed with glorious cinematic synths in the vein of Jean Michel Jarre or Vangelis. It's my favorite release from Sky Burial so far.
In collaboration with Mike Page, we've released this new Sky Burial album through the Crucial Blaze series as a limited art edition limited to two-hundred hand numbered copies. The disc is packaged in a clear library case that also includes a set of ten full-color art cards that features the Void series of abstract abyssal visions specifically created for this release (all bound together in a black-on-black obi band), another insert card with album credits, and a 1" Sky Burial badge.
