Plague Recordings

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Audela
Audela

Catalog#: Plague 002
Format: CD
Status: Available in our SHOP

Audela's debut CD. First edition is numbered, second edition is not. All tracks made between 1992-2007. 79 minutes of gloomy ambient inspired by Jupiter's Great Red Spot, an ongoing storm first glimpsed 400 years ago.

Tracklisting
1. Part 1 (19:03)
2. Part 2 (14:17)
3. Part 3 (18:34)
4. Part 4 (15:41)
5. Part 5 (12:03)

Reviews
"Plague Recordings returns with another triumphant ambient release. Audela follows in the footsteps of the anonymously created May The Plague Be With You, going farther into the void discovered between the microbes infecting our ears.

Packaged in a glossy full colour (though predominantly black) cardboard slip jacket featuring what I presume to be a Hubble Telscope photograph of a nebula, the object offers little clue to what it holds within. The enigma of The Plague continues...

The first track is the orchestral accompaniment for an unsettled spirit, taken from familiar surroundings without explanation and left to wonder at its fate. Rich natural string textures reverberate to the accompaniment of ghostly static. As a shattering resonance is achieved, the tones fall away and leave a lingering hint of bells and chimes, then swell again into further washes of grey and dust. Am I being carried out to sea, or buried beneath the earth? No, perhaps I am far, far above looking down.

Are these the organic bubblings of my organs? The movements of my muscles as I float within a chamber of fluid suspending my animation for a trip between worlds? The thumpings and gurglings of the second track, accompanied again by distant reverberating strings, are the ideal depiction of sensory isolation and stasis. An eerie calm without a sense of safety or permanence is only heightened by the nearly subharmonic boomings which occasionally permeate the track, only to be obliterated by a stereo panning treble sweep of sound. And suddenly, nearly eleven minutes along, the treble sweeps evolve into backwards spinning through the radio dial of alien broadcasts, only to again be absorbed into the radioactive static of the universe.

The gases of the ship must be expelling themselves now that the crew is asleep for its centuries long slumber. I hear the roar of the engines powering down after the trajectory has been established, and the occasional treble hiss of an airlock closing itself off for ages to come. Track three is the sound of a ghost ship in deep space. Have we invaded upon a sacred space we are not intended to comprehend? There shall be no sense of comfort here. The bright high pitched arcs of aural lightening will see to that as they cascade across the view plates of our suspension tanks. Yet slowly, inexorably, the ship settles into its role as berth and womb to us as we travel deeper into this unknown void.

And now the dream of centuries begins. The fourth tracks opens with slow motion treble and bass interplay, a conversation between two voices. As the voices begin to overlap, further swellings ensue, and the ghostly intimations of chimes return. Often, I fear I am to be left alone in this isolation, but the voices return with renewed strength, yet always the speakers themselves remain outside my line of sight. Are these truly voices, or merely the hallucinatory companions dreamed into existence by my abandoned mind on an eons long journey into oblivion?

Oblivion it is. We are arrived here, upon a new and hostile world, centuries removed from all we have known and loved. I can see the roiling clouds of primordial methane tumble past the window of the ship. The certainty of this reality is far more unsettling than the ambiguous nullity of the travel between stars. Track five is stark, harsh, and unforgiving. There is no going back, no escape, and the slightest error here will result in certain doom. Regular pulsations of mid and low tones resonant the frequencies of claustrophobic isolation and xenophobic alien dislocation occasionally punctuated be a treble roaring screech. The breathing of a great beast? No, simply the air processors of our terraforming machinery. Here we are left, listening to this maddening and hostile rhythm until the end of our days." (Sid Redlin, USA)