4 out of 5

Label: Auris Apothecary

Produced by: Ariadne

The bizarre, beautiful, raucous cross-section of From Quagmire and the Tetsuo soundtrack, art-duo Ariadne’s Stabat Mater already has a heady premise – (quoting bandcamp) “…inspired by the visions of female Christian mystics Hildegard von Bingen and Teresa of Ávila. The lyrics for Stabat Mater include adaptations of writings from these mystics fused together with text taken from surrealist poet Aase Berg’s With Deer and Dark Matter” – and is furthered down that course by being constructed as an audio/visual project; there’s an interactive web component to this 20-track experience.

However, very much to Christine Papania’s (voice, electronics) and Benjamin Forest’s (electronics) credits, Stabat Mater is incredibly affecting strictly on audio terms, and, allowing for willingness to get down with experimental noise, is surprisingly listenable as well, pushing past all that headiness with an ear for a good balance of consistency and change.

Above I gave two references: From Quagmire is similar here in its mixing of digital affectation and soaring, floaty vocals; while I do dig FQ, their style is a bit more open-ended in some ways, and I’d vote Christine Papania’s singing as the stronger of the two projects, and definitely with more compelling lyrics. The focus granted by the inspiring visions / texts surely helps; the lyric sheet is a pretty haunting read – lots of body horror-esque imagery, though on the line of something more sensuous, blending nature and organics with Self; like a swirl of blood and milk; Cronenberg and del Toro and Barker, all together.

The Tetsuo soundtrack (or rather, Chu Ishikawa’s score) is an essential component to that flick: all machine clatter and drill. The subject matter of that movie, though certainly applied differently, has a transhuman context that works with Stabat Mater, and the aural crossover is in the way our composers’ electronics shred and affect the music. The line gets so blurry at points, with gorgeous, “natural” sounding elements suddenly stalled and clicking, or distorted. This is hugely what keeps the record from feeling indulgent, as both sides of the sound – the natural and the unnatural – keep pushing back on one another, “threatening” to derail towards minimalism or chaos, and ultimately balancing out.

I’d say this tension is held nearly the whole way through, but the experience starts to slow as we reach the conclusion. On the one hand, I get the necessity: the album builds to a lot of noise in its final track. But in order to achieve that, the duo goes relatively sedate for the songs preceding, and it begins to feel more like an art project than a musical one at that point.

Still, based on the description, this is much more engaging than I think could be expected, and if taken in tandem with the visuals, is even more other-worldly.