Review: Anunnaki - Exploitations of the Chiromancer

Last year, as we all know, was a pretty stellar year for music (not a lot else mind, but the music WAS amazing). One of the standouts was 'Helios Rising' by Canadian band Moths and Locusts, a band inspired by "psychedelia, Krautrock, sciencefiction, vinyl records, and delay pedals". Dave Read, bassist with the band, is also one half of Anunnaki with Arlen Thompson. Anunnaki are an entirely different proposition......much darker, more experimental and much, much more rooted in the esoteric side of things...and by god it's good! If you're wondering, Anunnaki are a group of deities in ancient Mesopotamian cultures and a chiromancer is essentially a palmreader...there ya go, you've learnt something. 'Exploitations of the Chiromancer' is a deep, dense album full of dark atmospheres, arcane landscapes and cavernous noise.

The album is comprised of 6 tracks that all come together to form a satisfying whole. Opener 'Selenian Hand' is an exercise in sound and atmosphere built around a electronic framework....little swirls of electronica, short stabs of piercing drone and rich swathes of synths all bubble away over some exquisite guitar that is muted and treated. It is a lovely piece that artfully mixes a sci-fi ethos with the mystical. The track segues almost seamlessly into 'The Palm' that initially takes it's cue from the opener but builds upon it until after about a minute and a half the bass opens up and the drums crash into life. What was built on something atmospheric has now morphed into something way heavier. It has the feel of a spacey stoner number but has more density, more art. The bass is heavy enough to cave your chest in, especially with all the echo. Another neat segue brings in 'Mount Of Saturn' with it's bass/drum attack but the addition of what sounds like synthesised strings gives it a melancholic, almost sepulchral feel. The pace is slow and measured and the metronomic drums keep everything together. The track never just sits and treads water though...it is constantly evolving and morphing into different shapes - there are times when the pace picks up and others where there is an almost choral vibe going on (bits of this track reminded me a lot of some of the early instrumental work of Jim Thirlwell...think ' Theme from Pigdom Come' from 'Nail'). By the end of the track it has become a stormer...spacey effects over some pulsating bass and crashing drums....excellent stuff. 'Mount of Jupiter' is the longest track at just over ten minutes and has a very doom-ish thing going on - the slow but heavy instrumentation creating a foreboding atmosphere and this is achieved with just a bass and drums. It goes without saying that this is way more than just a doom track...there are more creative minds at work here; they mix in electronic trickery which just serve to heighten the dark mood and, just as the preceding tracks, the constant changing of tempo and approaches makes this a ten minutes that flies by. This has a lot in common with last year's stunning debut by KURO....in fact, if KURO had drums, it would sound a lot like this. 'The Line Of Fate' comes as a bit of a surprise with it's machinegun drums and belting bass riffs and charges along like a heavy spacerock locomotive....great stuff. The album is brought to a close by 'Luck, Adultery and the Hand' and it takes us almost full circle like a musical Ouroboros...back to the same bubbling electronica of the opener and the same atmospheric experimental musings. This sounds like a lot of the superb experimental music coming out of Italy at the moment under the banner of 'Occult Psychedelia'...it was a fine way to open an album and a cracking way to bring it to a close.

I seriously dig this album...I have spent many a happy hour with this playing on my headphones of late and on every listen there has been something new, a different facet to admire. It runs the gamut from passages of restrained power to flashes of beauty with everything in between and it's hard to believe that this glorious noise is only made by 2 dudes. This is not always an 'easy' listen but nothing worth having in this world is easy and it's that challenging that makes this so good - it subverts what we know about music and rebuilds from the ground up. 'Exploitations of the Chiromancer' is available from the band's Bandcamp page here as a download and CDR (which, I believe, are now sold out).