ninehertz

Recording epic, 100 minute long records of battle hammer doom once every three months or so under the guise of Void Sinker, solo artist Guglielmo Allegro obviously sat there and thought “I’ve just got too much free time” so concurrently started another solo band of similarly epic drone.

This is Nightscape then and their astral doom-drone voyage Cosmic Viewer. Ten tracks long, this is on the comforting, dreamy and doped feeling end of the genre. It is gentle and relaxing, happy to sit back and lean on its repeating half-riff, very much within the realms of Earth – both early era and the countrified more recent albums. You inevitably can easily find yourself slipping into meditative mindsets as it clouds around you, a measure of its quality.

It stays on this line throughout the album, changing more in mood than style, where one song can sleepily trip over its notes in a total sunbeam haze and then another brings a more morose, melancholically intoxicated reflection. The early songs are spot on, a skilful mastery of how to apply a deft hand to that most delicate of balances where minimalism actually has meaning and depth, although the album admittedly starts to lag a little towards it end.

Yes, it’s clearly in thrall to the discography of Dylan Carlson, and a couple of tracks fall a little flat and it may be a few songs too long, but Cosmic Viewer stills hold up as a strong, affecting drone record that achieves its mood-setting and meditation-inducing objectives in an extremely satisfying manner.