As the first in a series of music reviews for The Daily London Massacre, I thought that starting out with an album thematically centered around the Cthulhu mythos would be appropriate, or at least that I could do worse. Turns out I'm not so sure about that.
Nyarlathotep is the creation of a project (as they often call bands in the electronica genre) by the name of Flint Glass, and Wikipedia is going to tell me everything I will probably ever know about it.
Flint Glass is an experimental electronic project by French electronic musician Gwenn Trémorin. Flint Glass' debut album was released on Brume Records, which was co-founded by Trémorin and Boris Volant from the experimental collective Atelier112.
"Experimental electronic(a)" is usually a good byword for "What the hell did I just put in my ears?" Now, you could still say that with a smile on your face, having enjoyed the experience, but other times you may be angry and your ears might hurt, and sometimes (as in the case of Nyarlathotep) you will merely be bored and really, really tired of static effects.
The album looks promising to any fan of Lovecraft or the Cthulhu mythos in general. The track list is full of awesome sounding titles like "Shudde M'ell", "R'lyeh La Morte", "Brain Speaking Machine", "Yog-Sothot" and there are 15 of these (not counting four remixes), but half of them — literally every other track — are ~30 second interludes to the next piece.
Nyarlathotep seems like it's trying for an ambient feel: creepy and dark, with no particular compositional plot other than to push the shadowy, slithery feeling. It only half succeeds, because it also feels like it's trying to be an IDM album. All the full length titles have overly drawn out introductions which rattle into industrial drum and bass tracks that don't really go anywhere or do anything and then fade off into the next interlude. The end result is unfortunately generic, in spite of keeping a really good handle on the "gloomy and slimy" vibe. Perhaps my experiences in the ambient genre are limited, but I expected more variance. You could maybe put Nyarlathotep on in the background as a mood setter, but Flint Glass loves static bursts, distorted instruments and glitch, which makes the presentation too jarring for ambient, but still too meandering for IDM. Meanwhile, weren't we supposed to be thinking about awesome cosmic horror, not whether or not this song was going to do anything?
In spite of that, there are a couple of worthwhile pieces on the album. "Cthulhu Dawn" and "Silther Chaos" are both the longest tracks, but they are also the best. They both feature variety and a much better dynamic range that feels more like the conceptual ambient work it was intended to be. I get the impression that Flint Glass wanted to compose these pieces, and tacked in the rest as afterthoughts because hey! Cthulhu album!
Disappointing, but not a total loss, Nyarlathotep gets 2 out of 5 tentacles, mostly for having two good songs.
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