German label Diveliz Rex are releasing Beithíoch’s second album Aisling Dhorcha on tape.
From their press promo:

After the already promising debut Díolaim, Beithíoch has made a big step forward and delivers the follow-up concept Cassette album Aisling Dhorcha via DIVELIZ REX. Aisling Dhorcha consists of nine fantastic Ambient Black Metal songs with Gaelic lyrics that drag the listener back into ancient times. No long gimmicky description needed, let the music speak for itself!



Audio sample

Track listing:

01. Glór Cianaosta/”Primeval Voice”

02. An Anaithnid Dorcha/”The Dark Unknown”

03. Dornán Talaimh/”A Fistful of Earth”

04. Oíche Bhithbheo/”Immortal Night”

05. Arm Na Déithe/”Weapon of the Gods”

06. Solas Na Geallaí/”Light of the Moon”

07. Súil Bhaloir/”Balor’s Eye”

08. Athbhreith Lasánta/”Fiery Rebirth”

09. Ag Stánadh ar Shíoraíocht/”Staring at Eternity”

Available now. 3,50 EUR + shipping. Get both Aisling Dhorcha and Díolaim for 6 EUR + shipping.
All orders, trade & wholesale inquiries, hate mails go to divelizrex@yahoo.de

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Hi.Arc.Tow presents the debut album of industrial techno project Mushin as a free Creative Commons download. Realm of Corrosion fleshes out a techno industrial sound world around a narrative structural skeleton akin to that of prog-ambient or metal. Accompanying visuals for the album have been provided by photographer and graphic/texture artist David Watts (whose homepage is currently being reconstructed).

Download:
MP3 – FLAC

Visuals:
Front cover – Back cover

Mushin homepage @ Hi.Arc.Tow

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About Creative Commons

This album is provided as a free Creative Commons licensed download by HI.ARC.TOW. This makes it free to download and to redistribute.

An Sealgaire, the new mini-album from Beithíoch, is available now as a free Creative Commons licensed download.

The album is part of a two work set, the second of which will follow in a few months time. It marks a returns to the instrumental format of debut Díolaim whilst also refining the production and aesthetics of the entire artistic package.

download:
MP3

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About Creative Commons

This album is provided as a free Creative Commons licensed download by HI.ARC.TOW. This makes it free to download and to redistribute.

HI.ARC.TOW talks to the artist behind Cryosyncopy for an insight into the music and the motivations.

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1. Can you relate a bit of background to the project? What made you decide to write music?

I started writing simply because I wanted to express things I find interesting through music (which is my favorite form of art), and something (hopefully) that hasn’t been really expressed yet. If I have nothing special to express, then I can’t make (non-crappy) music.

2. The project is described as being “more cinematic than traditionally musical”; can you explain what is meant by this? Considering this, what frame of mind do you intend the listener to bring to listening to Cryosyncopy, or rather how does this mean you intend the music to be heard?

I dont know if it worked as I hoped it would, but I tried to give each sound meaning, unlike most musical efforts which contain alot of superfluity and thus end up being polished turds. I tell tales purely through sound and as you can see I don’t like music containing leading vocals/lyrics much (with the exception of some Classical, pre-modern stuff). That kind of music is intrinsically not very dynamic and subtle and often the propaganda attached is annoying. Instrumentation beats human mouths. As for how my music should be listened to, I may have already answered that. While its ultimately up to the listener to decide how they take in my music, by giving a single look at the nature of this music it becomes obvious that party music is the last thing it is.

3. Do you play an instrument in the traditional sense? In what way does this affect your music writing process?

I don’t really play any instrument, it doesn’t come naturally to me. I just program everything. The way this affects the music could be that everything sounds synthetic, rather than organic. This could be a good or bad thing. Personally, I don’t think it’s a bad thing considering what I aim for.

4. What provoked the drastic move towards fewer, longer tracks and the minimalistic meditative style you adopted on Cosmic Vicissitude?

As I said I don’t like to do what has already been done. Each Cryosyncopy album is therefore different from one another; each album reflects a different state of mind I had at the time. However the only thing that all the albums have in common is that dark, surreal feeling that naturally came in for me, hence the weird (but effective) clinical name “Cryosyncopy”. Cosmic Vicissitude is a strong, evocative concept that is perfectly fitting to be the ending chapter of this trilogy.

5. Can you give a brief explanation of the concept and ideas behind each album?

The imagery that Recollection of Lost fragments conjured in my mind was along the lines of dark horrors and/or occultic forces fused in self-operating machines in a forgotten, alien dystopian void. It’s like a very deep mental trip or dream. Very dark ambient influenced. Not really influenced by any particular ideology, just darkness, sci-fi and (lovecraftian) horror, but this could perhaps be my most nihilistic work.

During the time of Black Sea I was into alot of dark romanticism and very much influenced by early (90’s) Black Metal, (Dark) Techno and some (90’s) Hiphop, as well as the already fundamental dark ambient genre. So I decided it would be cool to combine these and the titles of this album speak for themselves.

Finally Cosmic Vicissitude was supposed to be the all-encompassing epic work that narrates the existence of the universe. The theme is obviously very dualistic (Eraser/Maker).

But I like Cryosyncopy to be about discovery, I dont want to spoil the mystery too much by saying much more.

6. Why have you chosen to release your music as free downloads?

I don’t care for profit, fame or the world very much. I just release it

7. Why have you decided to end the Cryosyncopy project?

My state of mind changed at the last album and I no longer felt the need to do this kind of thing. Also I felt that everything appropriate to the Cryosyncopy name has already been done.

8. Any future musical plans?

Cryosyncopy is dead, but be on the lookout for my new project “Mushin”, which is less nihilistic and more alive and beat/melody oriented.

News from Beithíoch.

Alot of people I know will still be getting their heads around Aisling Dhorcha, for the rest of the world though I’m happy to announce that more Beithíoch is immanent.

“An Sealgaire” is a short-form work part of a two-album set. Its in the droney, ambient, instrumental metal format of pieces like “Battle Fury”, “Tragic Hero” and “The Great Beast” from Díolaim and a shade nearer maybe to “Arm Na Déithe” than the other pieces on Aisling Dhorcha.

Overall sound will be a bit sleaker, sharper (by Beithíoch standards) and conceptually its more obscurantist and abstract than the first two albums (as I hope is hinted by the visual artwork you can now see on the myspace page and on Hiarctow.com). In my opinion, its the most quintessentially Beithíoch work of all so far, nearer the ethos laid out from the begining than anything preceding or following it.

The second album of this set is almost complete also, but I’ll say no more about it for now. I need only to make a few tweaks to An Sealgaire and I’ll have it available for download soon.
In the mean time, I’ve put an mp3 up on the myspace as a preview, “Ceo Dearg”.

Direct download link for the mp3 here.

Beithíoch page on Myspace

Beithíoch explains why their albums are free:

Alot of zines mistrust Beithíoch because the music is free. It pays to be wary of freebies. They’re usually either crap or have a catch (or both if you’re really lucky).

Beithíoch is different. For a genre oversaturated with bands, giving away an album for free is a shrewd move for a new band. It puts you at an advantage instantly to anyone selling their demo/album – potential listeners haven’t got to weigh up whether the album will be a waste of money, nor do they have to wait very long to get ahold of it. People can be introduced to new music free, quickly and, especially important for bands who stress that an album is a complete work, properly.

Profit ofcourse is nil, short term. long term however has other prospects, if you want to take them.

You could be forgiven for thinking after Díolaim that Beithíoch were your average, no-hoper one off bedroom black metal band. Wrong. Despite the minimalist, lo-fi sound Beithíoch is a serious project. The ideas and the music are deliberate, genuine and thought out. I want this music to be measured against the greats and I want it to enhance your life as much those classics do.

There then is the other factor – nothing exposes a work more to scrutiny than to make it freely available. There are no clever marketing teams to peddle an image and theres nothing to stop people hearing the music and deciding for themselves whether its any good. The ultimate musical eugenics.

Listen to Beithíoch here

Inspired by a post at metal site hessian.org:

The use of motifs and leitmotifs is very frequent in the musical genres of classical and opera, but we can also find some examples of their use in that furious contemporary “classical” brand of sound making we known as heavy metal.

[...]

Motifs have been used in metal music for all of its existence. In fact, the first motif in the history of the genre is the universally recognizable three-note sequence which is the main riff of the song “Black Sabbath” by the band of the same name. What would the rest of the song be without it? Like this trascendental example, motifs are the norm, rather than the exception, in metal.

Couple of very cool examples of recurring motifs in death metal come from Asphyx (intro to the The Rack and the title track) and Sinister (intro to the album Hate and the track Awaiting the Absu). Both times the intros present a portion of a thought then repeats that thought later in the album within a different context.

Motivic writing is a big part of metal. Sometimes its a very definite part of the writing process (Therion’s Beyond Sanctorum – listen to the way new riffs are actually almost always a variation of a preceding riff) other times its implied by the similarity of riff shapes and tonal pallette a band/album uses (Discharge and Ildjarn are good examples of this, but you can also hear it in Slayer, Malevolent Creation and tons of other bands). One other explicit example of motivic metal is Aisling Dhorcha by Beithíoch (main theme occurs in the intro, then the first and last metal tracks are built around it).

The best metal writing like classical is prismatic: it presents several views of similar or the same ideas to create a sophisticated sense of interconnectedness to the whole. Philosophical implications abound.

Filmed on Mount Douglas Beach, British Columbia, Canada by Mathew Augustus.

View the video in High Definition here.

“Evening Skies” is taken from the 2008 album Incandescence by Síol Na Gréine. Download it for free from HI.ARC.TOW here.