 |
|
The Haxan Cloak, "Excavation"
To this day, I am utterly baffled as to how The Haxan Cloak managed to become relatively popular at all–it all seems suspiciously Faustian.  Granted, Brian Krlic's profile has certainly benefited from his getting lumped in with the Raime/Demdike Stare pantheon of glacial, black-hearted "dance" artists, but his debut album was still essentially a collection of bleakly dissonant string dirges inspired by death, something that does not generally offer much in the way of mass appeal (or individual appeal for me, for that matter).  Excavation, however, is intermittently amazing, as Krlic's incredible evolution and inspired addition of deep sub-bass have transformed his previously oppressively sad vision into quite a heavy and frightening one.
While I did not have especially high expectations going into this album, the first minute of opener "Consumed" was so crushingly awesome that I had to immediately start the song over to hear it again.  At under two minutes, "Consumed" is little more than an introduction, but its transition from ominous, gloomy thrum to massive, evil sub-bass is one of the heaviest things I have ever heard: it sounds like a slow-motion earthquake tearing the ground apart to loose some long-buried and forgotten horror upon the world.  Needless to say, that makes for a tough act to follow, but Krlic gamely does his best, as the remainder of Excavation sounds like a fully formed and gloriously ruined aural dystopia, roiling with nightmarishly decayed, warped, slowed, and pitch-shifted motifs galore.  All of which is right up my alley, of course.
Aside from the atypically warm closing piece ("The Drop"), Krlic does not bother much with melody at all, nor does he bring back much of the organic instrumentation that was so integral to his past work.  In most cases, that would be a step backwards, but Brian succeeds so beautifully at texture, mood, and pulse that Excavation somehow thrives in their absence: most of the elements that I would normally want in a song just simply do not belong here.
In fact, space, emptiness, and a total lack of graspable melody are absolutely integral to maintaining this suite's mystique and looming sense of dread.  Most of Excavation sounds like a dubstep party in hell (ideal location) that is only audible through weirdly time-stretched, muted, and hallucinatory snatches.  While the throbbing, subterranean bass is relatively omnipresent, virtually every other element sounds like it is fighting to break through a barrier of some kind, which is an impressive production feat.  It is not easy to sound simultaneously massive and visceral and spectrally detached, but the best moments of Excavation deliver exactly that.
My sole critique is that Brian's compositional talents are not quite on the same level as his impressive abilities in all other respects.  For example, aside from the bookends, there are not many characteristics that distinguish these pieces from one another.  Also, taken on a song-by-song basis, a few pieces seem overlong or one-dimensional.  Given the nature of the material, however (haunted ambiance and sustained simmering horror), such shortcomings are not nearly as significant as they might be otherwise.  They are definitely enough to prevent Excavation from being a full-on masterpiece, but not enough to stop it from being a great album that definitively catapults Krlic into the upper echelon of dance music's shadowy underground.
Samples:
 
