"Ephemeral is an album that showcases the harsher side of black gaze, and blends it with some of the most melancholic and ethereal atmospheric crescendos, ultimately, creating a post-black fury of light and dark, good and evil"
Carlos Herrera is a musical workhorse, an artist who works tirelessly through the medium of music and seems to seek inspiration from almost everything that guides him through his everyday life. He seems to be far more perceptive and sensitive to the things that we can often take for granted on this earth. There’s beauty in everything that surrounds us, whether it shows itself as a beacon of light and hope, or as a dark and comforting veil of melancholy. Carlos, along with all his projects, including Non Somnia, have the craft and qualities to harness and compose all these feelings and put them to music. Music that moves you and often breaks you, but ultimately unearths an emotion of some kind that makes you feel alive and awake.
Saasil, meaning light, is a collaboration between Carlos and Victoria Haze, a lady who might be familiar to a lot of you through her other project, Cora’s Heart. Well, together they bring forth this beautifully dark and abrasive album that is awash with blizzard-like screams and angelic serenading. Ephemeral is an album that showcases the harsher side of black gaze, and blends it with some of the most melancholic and ethereal atmospheric crescendos, ultimately, creating a post-black fury of light and dark, good and evil.
Opening tracks like Roses bring with it, a soft yet heavy mist of synths and distant whispers that fill the room with atmosphere an instant emotion. Gentle piano keys and sullen strings weep lowly before being smothered by the harsh black screams that cascade down like torrential rains, soaking everything under a deluge of thundering drums and fuzzy guitars. Funeral paced and aching in grief, it continues to surge forward with power and unbridled emotion.
More Black gazed distortion and violent screams shroud the senses on The Longest Winter while Tomoe Gozen tick-tocks its way into your head with that hypnotizing metronomic beat and soft, sweet piano that reminds me of something straight out of Solstafir’s Otta album. Faint vocals and soft spoken words fall deep below the mix as a wall of reverbed guitars lead the charge under a muted blast beaten finale.
The opening moments of the acoustic leaden and doom inspired Narea gradually morphs into a cacophony of disquiet and dismay, unearthing great fear and trepidation, while Memento Finis drifts and floats through a shoegazed trance, with more of those angelic vocals caressing the tempo and leading the track to its near celestial end.
In My Last Night closes the album with a synthesized dreamscape that opens the mind to a great black hole, an infinite void, where you find yourself soaring through great emptiness and nothingness. Its harsh and bleak but somewhat comforting and consoling in the same breath. There’s no hiding my love and respect for the work of Carlos Herrera, especially with his work on Non Somnia, but this collaboration with Victoria Haze is another triumph. Cora’s Heart can be heard beating right through this album, and it brings with it, new life, and a softer edge to this black gazed journey. Be sure to check out both artists on Bandcamp, and please support this amazing underground talent.