.cut — Sinistre
The latest release from Histamine Tapes is a sublime journey through a sparse and eerie sound world
Histamine Tapes | February 2022 | Digital & Cassette | Bandcamp
Sinistre (French) | adjective: ominous, noun: damage
The experimental band .cut describe their sound as: “the soundtrack to that split second when the darkness around each of us becomes familiar, almost soothing.” This is an accurate pathway into an EP that skilfully wraps up shifting shades of tonal ambiguity into a riveting soundscape. Propelled by a variety of drones, electroacoustic ambient vignettes coil around intriguing samples and sparse acoustic instrumentation.
Beginning in medias res, the opening track ‘200 Dead Bodies On Mount Everest’ is steered by a narrator who shares their discovery of a body in the snow. Almost as soon as the voice enters it disappears within the rising static and thunder claps that reside inside a steady drone. And then about half way through, the voice reappears from out of the static.
As of January 2021, 305 people have died while attempting to climb Everest, which means the majority of the dead are still on the mountain. We wonder whether the narrator’s comments on their discovery also serves as a philosophical comment about how markers of death and renewal appear along the route of life, while weather changes but lives on. As a prologue is it highly effective; setting up an immersive and eerie sound world that asks us to consider questions about reverence and remembrance.
What follows throughout the 23-minute run time is an always interesting interplay of nature and humankind. The EP plays out as one continuous fracturing and rejoining of sounds, which helps to create an impression of temporal and spatial movement. In ‘Light, Only Light . . .’, running water trickles in between swirling, rusted drones. The middle of the release sees bells and chimes welcoming in a fatigued meditation, uneasily weaved together with white noise and textural interference. While a conversation fragment lying fairly low in the mix in ‘Gérard’ grows in uncanny intensity by being surrounded by drones that circles around the voice.
Voices drift in and out of tracks, including voicemail, snippets of monologues and conversations — and these add to the impression we’re listening into a new weird radio play, or a lo-fi experimental tone poem inhabited by spectres living within the drones and environmental field recordings.
During ‘The Yellow King’ a different, cinematic narrator enters the edges of the frame. This sample is in fact a monologue from True Detective’s homicide detective, Rust Cohle:
“In eternity, where there is no time nothing can grow nothing can become nothing changes...”
We have shifted locations; from the lonely mountains of the first track to somewhere slightly more populated. Alongside the jaded philosophising and cult mythos, The Yellow King (and many parts of Sinistre’s environmental sculptures) shares the oppressive mood of season one of the aforementioned HBO show. We can feel a mysterious heat coiled up among gnarled trees and jaded soil being kicked around in the warm wind. A murky mystery, surrounded by claustrophobic swamps — almost capturing something supernatural in nature.
In ‘Exotica’, a cold caller called Amy leaves a message to someone, stating they have won a free cruise to the Bahamas. Their message repeats over an ominous drone. In this repetition Amy’s message sounds more and more like an audio cue from the phone in the cult Playstation game PT. These moments show how everyday sounds subtly gather a paranormal quality; an otherness, through their construction.
The final track ‘Body Farm’ includes a wonderful country-esque acoustic guitar that gradually grows more sinister in its repetition and accompaniment by Arnø’s violin. On some plane it almost could be a distant cousin to a sparse Velvet Underground dirge; a blues swamp jam.
At times Sinistre reminds me of the sonic inventiveness of Phil Elverum, alongside their shared fascination with the vastness of the universe and the beautifully raw and savage power of nature. This EP is an impressive collage of sounds which rewards repeated listens when different layers can take turns to shift in and out of focus, much like a flock of birds flying towards the sun.
As per Histamine Tapes’ manifesto — focusing on reuse and breathing new life into unwanted ephemeral — for the physical edition the release is dubbed in real time to reclaimed cassette tapes. Every cassette has gorgeous, unique art work and a j-card assembled from hand torn scraps of a landscape photography book of the United States. A beautiful item to match a sonically rewarding listen.
Listen + support: https://histaminetapes.bandcamp.com/album/sinistre-ht063
