5 out of 5

Label: Fonolith

Produced by: Neil Scrivin

Neil Scrivin’s The Night Monitor has, for me, continually been a wildly promising outlet that hasn’t quite delivered what I want. The concept seems to be to score fictional / documented / imagined supernatural events; “soundtracks” for the spooky unknowns. With Neil’s exploratory work on his own name, Doomlode’s dystopian ambience, and Phono Ghosts’ / Meatbingo’s retro IDM all covering a lot of ground, NM’s slow-paced storytelling is a wonderful addition to the Scrivinverse, and the subject matters covered just sound (and are art-designed) so cool.

But: because the storytelling is full-scope, and there’s an era-blending element where 80s-tinged electronics are being used to cover things from decades ago, I find there to be a lot of downtime on NM releases and some disconnect with the subject matter. The music is a bit too descriptive to be drone, but also not always eventful enough to map to the alien invasion or haunting that Neil is musically documenting.

I was kind of worried that a compilation from The Night Monitor would set me even further from immersion, as it would inherently remove the narrative element, but: perhaps because most of these songs are from compilations, and thus standalones, or perhaps because removing them from context makes me assess them without baggage… ‘On the Track of Discovery’ – a collection of comp tracks and outtakes – has become a new favorite Scrivin release.

Thought still went in to telling a story: these are not sequenced chronologically, or even grouped by release when songs came from a similar source, but instead shift us tonally from bright to dark as things go along. The Vangelis tribute song that opens things is, firstly, a perfect Neil take on the style, and secondly welcomes the user to the album: arms open; hopeful. Things turn creepy soon enough, of course, but the first steps are still playful – up through The Hampstead Horror, there’s a nice retro vibe that plays like campy horror, which is fitting, since that track is from a Library of the Occult release. It gets colder: It’s In The Computer and others shift us into technology: hard edges and static. Then it’s on to pure blackness, as Malefic Power Spiral and Dark and Inhuman are awash in loud ambience, muffled keys. Irradiation of Omniscience, our conclusion, feels like the end of an H.P. Lovecraft story, marrying the celebratory vibes of Vangelis to noisy bravado – worshipping dark gods.

All of these songs work on their own to conjure a vibe, but are daisy chained perfectly together. An appreciated collection of hard-to-get The Night Monitor material, but also an absolute highlight of the intensity I imagine is hiding in the other albums I’ve been mixed on, giving me reason to go back with newly opened ears and reexperience them.