Friday, May 14, 2010

OOPs: Tzesne - Cliffs Under The Mist (Mystery Sea, 2007)


Tzesne - Sunburnt Skin








This is one of the many infinitely limited releases that's sold out from the brilliant CD-R label Mystery Sea. Usually only 100 copies of each album, and every goddamn one is a fucking beauty. Tzesne's Cliffs Under The Mist is no different.

You should be able to guess what this sounds like just on the name alone. Super minimal, gorgeous, haunting drone. 3 looong tracks clocking in around 50 minutes total. I think it might be made entirely of field recordings, too. The liner notes don't list any instruments, just various coves from where sounds were gathered. Which is awesome because it doesn't always sound like field recordings, unless there were low flying jets with extra resonant engines that day.

It's called Cliffs Under The Mist but sometimes I get much more of a "cliffs under the sea" kinda feeling from it. It's more rich & dense than I imagined mist would be, and there's a shimmering quality like looking up at the sun from the bottom of the ocean. Not like I think the album is poorly titled. In fact just the opposite. The title is what originally drew me in before I bought it and it still does a good job of getting the point across.

It's all 100% magnificent, if not overtly stunning. It's heavy and intense, moody to the point of being emo (but never ever 'cause emo drone? exactly. never), and so soporifically textured it doesn't matter that it's not the most blissful drone under the sun (or mist (sorry)).

Why it took me 3 years to review this is beyond me. But whatever because now it's sold out and probably never coming back and I'm being a nice guy and sharing it with you all because it deserves to be heard by more than 100 people.

GERONIMOOOOO

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