230 Divisadero

The year is 1797. You are a sailor. Bound for distant colonies, you awake one morning to find that a storm has driven your ship out to sea. As you rub the sleep from your eyes, stumbling out onto deck, you call out to your crew mates, but your voice is swallowed by the howl of the wind. There is no noise but the mournful groan of the ships hull - you are alone. Alone, you cannot man the ship. Alone, surrounded by the sea, engulfed in a suffocating blanket of fog. What hope do you have? The hours trickle away as you lie staring hopelessly into the gray sky, catatonic, stupefied in your terror. Days pass and soon ghostly apparitions begin to form before your eyes, the hallucinations of a mind on the brink of madness...

Welcome to A Vision Of Lost Unity, a twenty-eight minute Coleridge-esque odyssey into desolation and damnation. The EP begins appropriately with the words of a zealous preacher, telling us in no uncertain terms that all men are born into sin, that the world is a 'kingdom called death'. With this ominous warning issued, the journey begins. The drone ambient churns like the torpid depths of some dead sea. A cello is heard advancing and retreating, circling like a great white shark. The sound of ragged breaths echo here and there. Voices rise and fall, whispering and murmuring like mythic siren's through the fog.

Matching the sludgy thrum of SunnO))) with the chilling electronics of Coil, A Vision... is awash with atmosphere. All the listener needs do is lie back and let the waves of sound carry them away to the 'misty soundscape' that 230 Divisadero evoke so clearly in the minds eye. While this may not be a voyage you want to take frequently or in the company of others, in keeping with grim isolation that the music suggests, it is none the less a worthwhile trip.

8.2 / 10 — Jenny