Spektr - Mescalyne
 |
Judging from their sound, Spektr refer to the drug and not the Mescalyne Islands in Vanuatu. On 2006’s The Near Death Experience (which I wrote about here), this shadowy French duo rammed together dark ambient and black metal with jarring jump cuts. It was an intriguingly disruptive, Burroughsian take on an aesthetic that favors drones, trance states, and other continuums. The Mescalyne EP (Debemur Morti, 2007) is likewise cinematic and hallucinatory, but it isn’t so disjointed. This is due to more cohesive drum programming that seems to have an electronic music influence, particularly drum ‘n’ bass. That’s a strange influence to have these days, but Spektr are all about the strange. Mescalyne‘s four tracks feel like one, yielding a surprisingly cohesive, compact 23 minutes.
Mescalyne is available from Moribund, Relapse, and The End.
