It’s difficult to find a decent single-track LP these days. A classic is Sleep’s Dopesmoker (disregarding the album’s live bonus material). The title track is a 63 minute-long sludgy opus about Jesus getting stoned in the desert. It’s definitely one of my favorite albums of all time, too. Another brilliant one-track album is The Great Barrier Reefer by Bongripper, a truly grand 78 minute-long post-metal suite.
Now enter Christos Fanaras’ Impermanence. It’s sole track - the namesake - is 44 minutes of dark ambient drone. It’s as galactic as Rifts-era Oneohtrix Point Never, but, at the same time, is as bleak as Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra’s most desolate dirges. Impermanence is a captivating single-track LP, and it’s also the first one I’ve listened to that isn’t of the metal genre.
A ghostly hum slivers in at the start of “Impermanence,” accompanied by a deep, oceanic-sounding rumble. Eerie, haunted house-like organs play spidery, discomforting C# minor melodies for the first few minutes, which segues into white noise and then dissonant post-rock melodies. The organs slowly creep back into the mix, steadily building up to a cacophony of formidable guitars and keyboards.
The track’s latter half is more percussive, but it retains the aerial gloominess of its first half. At around 36:30, the tempo really slows down, sounding a lot like Earth if they were a synth band. That really got my attention.
Overall, Christos Fanaras creates a morose, yet entrancing world with “Impermanence.” Like most dark ambient music, the track is extremely slow and it gets boring at times. However, “Impermanence” definitely has its moments of brilliance. I highly respect Fanaras’ musical venture.
