The Ahasverus Project

Foundation - Ahasverus act III

This is the third manifestation of the Ahasverus act.

The wine which through the eyes we drink
Flows nightly from the moon in torrents,
And as a spring-tide overflows
The far and distant land.

Title: Foundation - Ahasverus act III
Year of production: 2007
Type: Professional CDR, limited edition

1. Insomnia (4.07)
2. Oneirodynia (5.18)
3. Parasomnia I (6.12)
4. Sleep Paralysis (9.31)
5. Oneirataxia (7.06)
6. Parasomnia II (5.05)
7. Oneironosia (2.37)
8. Paroneiria (6.20)

Total: 46.53

Order: 8 Euro

Shipping Europe: 2 Euro

Buy from CDBaby (US and Worldwide) $12.97

When Dr. Ignazio Roiter found out that a woman in an italian family suddenly lost her ability to sleep completely, the established researchers didn´t believe him. The doctor found after a while that she was suffering from a very rare genetic disease that put the sleeping center in the brain out of use. The patients get more and more changed in personality, after half a year they are hard to communicate with, and after months they die. The gentic disease, called Fatal Familial Insomnia, has an inevitable end in death.

As the radio DJ Peter Tripp tried to place himself in the Guinness book of records for not sleeping for 200 hours, the research team that surveilled him noted that his brain went into dreaming mode – that is, it displayed the same visual energy distribution as when people normally are dreaming. But Peter Tripp wasn´t asleep, he was parttaking in the discussions at the table. Finally he actually made it into the Guinness book of records, but he also divorced his wife and lost his job because of changed personality.

Sleeping, and dreaming, are as these examples show necessary for us to remain unchanged as humans, and to live a social life. But what actually is happening on that other side is unreachable for the researchers. One of the most established methods to gain more knowledge about the mind is to study brain damages and psychologic disorders. But it is hard to see what the scholars can find out from this.

Maybe Ignazio Roiter and Peter Tripp would have agreed, that ultimatly the foundation for life is are the dreams, not the woken unlife. Those who have met Hecate in person can tell.

Reviews:

Ahasverus' third major work continues stilistically from where the divine Evocation (2006) left off, but is somewhat lighter. It is incredibly well building dark, beautiful ambient, the changes in which you can often anticipate, yet they're still repeatedly admirable. The production-style is quite robust and the tracks flow nicely into one another even as they all stand alone as individual parts of the whole. At a couple of times the techniques used are rather superficial, yet those too are eventually turned into an advantage for the total work. Take a significant portion of strongest-era Lustmord (which this really quite often resembles, even a bit too much), add in a dash of Atrium Carceri, and you get a good idea of what this sounds album like. Yet it's nevertheless quite original, and definitely a compositional work. The sole real weakness of Foundation is that Henrik Summanen has himself set his bar with Evocation so high, that this time he simply can't rise to the level of that masterpiece.

Incredibly good ambient, in the style of the old masters.

kuolleenmusiikinyhdistys

The CD "Foundation" is full of dark, spooky ambient music. If you are living on the edge, this is a perfect soundtrack. If your days are too long and boring, this album will make them exciting. Only 100 copies made so far.

Wyatting

I once knew someone who was firmly of the belief that people shouldn’t be wearing earphones and listening to music when walking on the street. He used to get rather upset about it. “People need to be alert at all times!”, he would rant, “Not making full uses of their senses when in the urban environment is a dereliction of their duty as a human! I could sneak up on them without them being aware!”. My more laissez-faire approach to portable music devices confounded him, and he moved to Japan (I don’t think I caused this, but you never know). I’m pretty sure he is a ninja now, the super-aware super-stealthy bastard.

Listening to this new album from Ahasverus (aka Swede Henrik Summanen) on earphones had a strange effect on me. In fact I felt super-aware, like I was perceiving the most minute sounds. I felt like a whale on legs. I could hear caterpillars munching on leaves in the trees. I could hear the heartbeats of those passing me in the streets, and even those sneaking up behind me with nefarious purpose in mind. I could hear moisture coalescing into thunder clouds. I could hear tectonic plates shifting under my feet. Foundation is reminiscent of the brilliant Elegi album on Miasmah last year; previously-repressed traces of string-based melody mingle with best-unidentified found sounds to increasingly discomfiting effect. I’m new to the work of Ahasverus, but this record marks him out as worth following (a few paces behind, just beyond his field of vision).

Mapsadaisical

Dark ambient som faktiskt är kuslig. Det mullrar, knastrar och sprakar. Påminner om Sunn O))), om man skippar munkkåpor och svartmetallen då.

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