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| Cover art by Adam Burke |
Go get your mind's space gear (head phones), because it's got an invitation by Hound the Wolves to join them on a psychedelic journey through Drone, Doom, Stoner soundscapes with their debut album Camera Obscura.
The journey has four stages and takes about 30 minutes.
The first one, the opening song, "If Lost In Mind" is a kind of an intro song. There doesn't seem to happen very much, but it perfectly lays out what the music is about. There is such a hypnotic power to it that entrances and lures you into its spritualistic vibe, opens your mind and senses for what's to come. Drone based, slow paced, echoing, reverberating sounds, ethereal vocals that seem to come from different directions, surround and enshroud you. A rotating droning sound like a spinning gyroscope, or prayer wheel adds a ritualistic element and it softly lifts you up. The very next moment you get hurled into space and into the next song.
"Masquerade" starts off heavier, faster and more aggressive, but there’s always a spacious open sound and a sense of elusiveness. Soon the song slows down and slides into a mysterious gloomy atmosphere with a dark Drone background and murky melodies. Propelling driving drums and bass and many layers of sounds mount into a climactic build up carrying the song to its glorious end. There's a great Sludge and Post Metal feel to this song with different kinds of dynamics and tensions. Throughout the album the vocals always match the respective moment's mood perfectly well and contribute to its sense of harmony and completeness, but nowhere on the album this is as striking as it is in this song.
"Omnia In Numeris Sita Sunt" then calms everything down again and floats along a gloomy space road in a slow pace . This song somehow seems to balance out the unsettling mood of its predecessor. The mesmerizing vocals, that repeat the song title in mantra-like chants and the rotating, spinning sound from the opening song brings back the hypnotic, ritualistic feel of that song.
The 4th and final song "Everything Lies Veiled In Numbers", doesn't only share the title with the 3rd song, just in a different language, it also has a similar kind of structure and dynamics. The mood differs, though, going more into a melancholic direction, but it's no less obscure, gloomy and magical.
Camera Obscura is truly trippy and meditative. The way this five piece band from Portland /OR layer the sounds and melodies, keep it all spacious and elusive, lucid and obscure at the same time, connect it with a genuine spirituality that avoids all cliché, is quite unique, highly emotional and powerful.
The track "Everything Lies veiled In Numbers" is featured on The Wicked Lady Show 158