I need to stop listening to this, but, wait, no, I really do because it is getting rather ridiculous repeatedly listening to the same piece of music over again and that is exactly what is going on with Hushed Bloom and my headphones; these tones reverberate inside my head as the warm tones caress my tired brow in an utterly depressing but strangely comforting manner. Life In The Dark’s effort is emblematic of the works already present in its body of work even if the methodology behind the song structures and arrangements are a tiny bit different; this time around, Life In The Dark goes back to the longer form compositions heard on The Sunya Is Rising while being even more droning and numbing and hypnotic than its previous work.
The cassette version of Hushed Bloom is a cassette of two sides: one (“Hushed Bloom”), all subtly nightmarish and disturbing without getting loud or overly oppressive and frightening comes complete with a droning female voice which threatens to drag listeners down in to a severely despondent abyss that comes out of a movement that is virtually just percussion and vocal depression while the second side (containing “Comadeth”) is more dream inducing in a pleasant and almost beautifully tragic manner with a barely audible spoken word part hidden beneath the droning, ambient waves that embrace the listener in an all too strange hypnosis almost certainly guaranteeing the loss of time. The CD version does lose some of the ambience of the dual nature of the tape, but the format provides a new perspective on Hushed Bloom by joining the two halves into a cohesive whole while adding a new song, “Silent Stream”, which bridges the original two tracks perfectly while being something new and different for Life In The Dark; “Silent Stream” is one of the most vocal tracks that has come from the project, and the vocals take the already slow and icy sounding music and create a cold and detached piece that acts as a crescendo of sorts for the whole Hushed Bloom.
Three months after getting the Hushed Bloom cassette, I found myself obsessing about the release and just constantly flipping it side to side while sitting here completely transfixed by what is coming out of my speakers, but the CD version only intensifies the experience with the extra song and lack of need to do anything other than leaving the album on repeat playing over and over as I lose complete track of time; and even though this review was written without the aid of chemicals in any way, I still feel that heavy headed fuzz and sort of half drunk hangover as I type these last few sentences because Life In The Dark just has completely obliterated my senses. Originally, I was going to end this review like this, “A completely logical step for Life In The Dark falling the The Sunya Is Rising / Limbs In Gloom release that further solidifies the growing niche that this project is starting to build and fill with moody pieces of sonic manipulation. Hushed Bloom is further evidence of the approaching essential listening quality from Life In The Dark; get lost in the dreamy sounds…” but forget that nonsense; Hushed Bloom is great, the tape is sold out, and you lose for missing out on it (unless you were one of the 25 of us bastards that scored a copy and if so, kudos to you), but the CD version may still be available.
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