REVIEWS

Gaels vs. Ghosts in the Clocktower
Gaels vs. Ghosts in the Clocktower

Wounds of the Earth

Posted: Tuesday, November 06, 2007
By: Ilker Yücel
Editor

A split EP is usually an excellent way for two unknown artists to share in the experience of gaining exposure with an audience and to showcase similar styles and musical interests. For Richmond, VA's Gaels and Baltimore, MD's Ghosts in the Clocktower (a side project of Worms of the Earth's d4n b4rr3tt), these seven tracks present a devastating array of cavernous ambience and chilling musical energies that are sure to cause their fair share of nightmarish visions in the listener's psyche. The three tracks from Gaels are perhaps the most varied of the lot, beginning with "Europan Auroras;" as an echoing synth melody reminiscent of Underworld's "Born Slippy" leads into a dense fog of psychedelic ambience, a cacophony of droning distorted guitars clamors in, bringing to mind the best moments of My Bloody Valentine or The Jesus & Mary Chain. The track eventually quiets down into a reverberating tone that fades us out into the acoustic guitar melancholy of "Midnight on a Bridge Over the River Lee." "A Desolate Sky" closes out Gaels' appearance with an extended soundscape of cold synthesized surroundings, encompassing the listener in a frozen blanket of sweet melodic calm. We are then introduced to the macabre world of Ghosts in the Clocktower, which is slightly less varied in tone, but certainly more consistent and terrifying. "Icey Winds Scar the Surface of Io" is wrought with thunderous shrouds of cold ambience driven by slithering percussion lines, while "Transmissions from LV426" is even more ominous with its layers of resonating tones that sound akin to guitar screeches, along with some submarine textures and buried electronic malfunctions, transporting the listener to that strange alien world first explored in Ridley Scott's Alien. "Void" could easily be a companion piece to "Icey Winds..." with its similar percussion and subtle, almost subliminal undertones of monstrous presences, while "Horizon (Singularity)" closes the EP out with an intriguing mix of energetic beats, mournful synth tones, and sweeping layers of ghostly atmospheres, as if being sucked into the maelstrom with no hope of escape. While the compositional skills of the two artists on this EP cannot be denied, what ultimately brings it down a notch is the sub-par production, creating an inconsistency in sound quality that would have greatly benefited the music overall and would have perhaps brought more of the lurking audio creatures to the fore. However, despite this, Gaels and Ghosts in the Clocktower present an apocalyptic collection that fans of dark ambient and abstract industrial would do well to seek out.