New Risen Throne - _Loneliness of Hidden Structures_
(Cyclic Law, 2011)
by: Chaim Drishner (2.5 out of 10)
Italy's philosophical ambient project New Risen Throne has given birth to its third album; a recording concluding a trilogy, so we're told, of albums dealing with the concepts of annihilation and rebirth. _Loneliness of Hidden Structures_ speaks in its non verbal language about reconstruction, regeneration and a newly reborn hope. You are going to be in need of the label's band info sheet to know all of this, of course, otherwise you will have no idea what message is being carried out by the minimal sounds contained within this recording; musically, an almost empty shell.

Of course, everything here is highly abstract, adhering to the aesthetics of ambient; the sounds, the themes, everything is being generalized, almost every idea here, because for New Risen Throne being as abstract as possible is probably everything.

Being devoid of any lyrics due to the instrumental nature of the recording, one is left puzzled and guessing throughout the album's sixty minutes -- that is, of course, if one cares enough to sit through these numbing, empty long minutes waiting for something to happen, to emerge, to fucking develop within the plot.

My guess is the majority of the audience would not endure an effective enough listening session before giving up; if that happens, one would probably miss the only worthwhile track throughout the recording, namely track number four, "New Risen Throne (I)". This is the only coherent, enjoyable track in existence within this album, with its primitive neo-classical bombast and its hypnotic nature of repetitive martial rhythmic loops. It is the single track in the album showcasing any sense of composition, logical structuring and melody, straying off the pure ambient trail.

In a world so full of musical possibilities, New Risen Throne have decided to minimize their sonic choices, by delivering as minimized and abstract an array of sounds as humanly possible. Now, there is that much minimization music can endure and still be regarded as such, and in turn, be regarded as such and consumed by the audience. Beyond a certain threshold of compacting and further refining, one might hit bedrock, that strata where nothing grows or ever will; an impenetrable slab of nothingness which in turn spawns only more of its sterile duplicates.

New Risen Throne like to cross that abominable threshold quite a bit, and delve into the murky waters of sterile non-musicality; in addition to alienation, this approach also bores the living shit out of the habitual listener.

The stark minimization of the recording hence renders it dull in musical content, preventing it from further developing and be further explored by the audience. Judging by the full-bodied and promising fourth track, the outfit owns the potential and the know-how of composing worthwhile melodies that would linger on and reverberate from the walls of the listener's mind.

_Loneliness of Hidden Structures_ is probably aimed for the most avid, pure ambient soundscape fans out there who know what to expect, what they seek for and know where to find whatever they look for in their kind of "music". Anyone else hungry for some quality tunes, seek elsewhere!

(article published 2/4/2012)


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