2 out of 5

Label: Library of the Occult

Produced by: Neil Scrivin

With apologies to Neil Scrivin – The Night Monitor – and the minders of label Library of the Occult, on which this album appears: I love Neil’s work, and the label is clearly an effort of passionate folk. …But this album doesn’t really stand up next to Scrivin’s other atmospheric records, to me, and I remain unconvinced of LOTO’s shtick.

It’s kind of unfair to hit the rating based on packaging and presentation and whatnot, but it is part of the deal this time: if the Library is going to promote themselves as soundtracks for occulty stuff, then it should play the role well. But I’ve never been able to get over an offputting veneer to their design style that doesn’t hit me with other similar labels / artists: while the Hexham heads are a good inspirative narrative, the apropos newspaper clippings and aged imagery absolutely do not sync with the color palette and font choices. It’s just a weird-ass blend of contemporary and modern tics that clearly don’t work for me, and while it’s a purposeful blend – I presume, since a lot of their output has notes like this – and surely working for an audience, it’s made me hesitant to dig into their roster beyond the artists I’ve known. So, yeah, on some level, it’s affecting my listening experience.

…Although on some level, Neil has run with the concept, or was well chosen to represent it: often working with old-school electronics, Scrivin’s ambient scores play within that realm of ancient unknowns that, simply by dint of being soundtracked via electronics, also have a “futuristic” or sci-fi / alien sound to them. But this doesn’t exactly sync with the kind of synthwave 70s / 80s horror LOTO seems to want to cater to, and that’s where Hexham Heads doesn’t land musically for me; more bluntly: I get no story from this. The tracks were recorded over a few years, according to a note on the back, and though I’m reading far too much into that, it feels suggestive of this stuff being applied after the fact – sonic ideas with which Neil was fussing around and then gathered together and shaped into an album. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing (and may be Scrivin’s normal process; and / or he just takes his time composing), however, even without that background, I noticed the 13 tracks on this score don’t cover much material – they are, for the most part, pretty similar tunes, and don’t exactly sequence in any notable way; most songs stand alone, and could be rearranged however,

So, ultimately, I just wish both the visuals and music immersed me more. Separate from the intended narrative, the general sound of buzzy, slowrolled alien synths and atmospheric hush is quality. However, it doesn’t really build up to anything, and when you try to piece it back to song titles / a story, and wrap that experience in the album art, Horror Of The Hexham Heads fumbles.