Unworeldes (2012), for example, has plenty of abstract textures but provides enough concrete details to stick in the memory. From incidental fader crackle, low throbbing drone, dungeon-synth-esque keys and a low-mixed woman’s whispering to industrial hissing and tenor Gregorian chant, Arktau’s set captures a mood somewhere between meditative and uncomfortable, somehow coming across as even more ambient than on record. Arktau certainly provide plenty of ceremony, with members turning to the altar in a praise-the-sun gesture, parading the perimeter of the stage, donning a red cloth, and burning incense with which to symbolically anoint the audience.īut they have ultimately risen from the black shadow realms of dark ambience. To me, pure “ritual” ambient suggests a focus on the performance of some ceremony as part of which any sound – the shuffle of feet, ringing of bells, chanting of incantations, etc. Emerging from stage-left, each member of Arktau is dressed like a version of the Scarecrow from The Dark Knight who’d spent too long at Glastonbury, yet still managing to appear suitably ominous. Of the four or five gigs I’ve seen at St John’s, tonight’s is lit the best, with red uplight directed through a mesh of some kind to suggest a bloody pentacle over the altar and to highlight the paintings either side (Station 8: ‘Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem’ to the left, I think, and Station 9: ‘Jesus falls for the third time’ to the right). And it could not be better suited to the pairing of Finnish acts that Old Empire have arranged for us tonight.Īrktau Eos make ritual dark ambient music and seem to take their self-described “religion with no name” very seriously. It’s a testament to the diversity of our capital that you can buy a tasty ale (for £3!) from the vicar himself and make pleasant conversation about the gory paintings of the Stations of the Cross (by Chris Gollon) that surround the interior. But we’re all very glad that tonight’s venue, the fine St Johns on Bethnal Green, welcomes those with heathen leanings into their atmospheric building. “Real music should aspire to magic,” Hexvessel main-man Matt McNerny reminds us at one point in tonight’s show, “and I’m glad to have these musical magicians with me.” The pagan themes and ritual performances on display tonight are not the usual kind of magic that you’d expect to find in a practising Anglican church, although there are thick clouds of frankincense hanging in the air.
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