Peder Mannerfelt

Over the past year as Peder Mannerfelt has shed the skin of The Subliminal Kid, we've only had small samples to taste of his new brand of musical sorcery. Lines Describing Circles changes all of that. Ten tracks deep, this is not so much an album as it is a declaration. From the opening, harrowing crackle of "Collapsion," Mannerfelt's intent is to crush the listener into a perfect metal cube. Lines Describing Circles displays the sound of a man fully in control of his machines. Throughout the album, though, there are respites: the title-track settles into a hypnotic groove while a simple, infectious melody repeat into darkness, while "In Place of Once Was" has a melody lurking, too, but it's constantly overwhelmed by sub-bass nihilism. "Gulo Gulo Caesitas" is the pinnacle of the firestorm: cacophonous beats pummel you into submission while feedback and seemingly endless layers of aural mayhem pour down like sonic acid rain. As the computerized voice repeats "barren" over and over on "Evening Redness in the West," there is no horizon left to long for. Peder Mannerfelt's transformation complete, he is off to find new trails to blaze as the melancholic pads of "Rotterdam Anagram" are obscured by distorted filth. Mastered and cut by Stefan Betke. 500 copies only, comes in a spot gloss sleeve.

"Inhabiting space between slow techno and electro-acoustic dimensions, 'Ill Fares The Land' surveys similar soundscapes to Mika Vainio and Joachim Nordwall's recent 'Monstrance' LP and Senking's drowned space. Bolstered by extruded cello strings and serrated bass pulses, the fourteen minute, two-part opener 'Oran' could be the expansive soundtrack to a brutal art-house horror flick, whilst 'Kurtz' and 'One-Eye' keen towards a sort of mittel European chamber-doom making subtle but integral use of resonant harmonics and traces of arcane melody laced with blackened bass. In the album's most concise and perhaps poignant moment, 'Decline' reminds us of The Haxan Cloak or Roly Porter's ominous portents, and finally 'Stuffed Men' closes with a display of quiet/loud elemental might comparable with Emptyset's best, imbued with extra space courtesy of Rashad Becker's typically sharp mastering treatment." Boomkat