Australian Post-Metal/ Doom Black Aleph "Apsides"

Australian post-metal/ doom band Black Aleph reveals a stunning new live video for track Precession from debut album Apsides, out 25 October on Art As Catharsis and Dunk Records.

Black Aleph are a Sydney/Melbourne based experimental ensemble featuring Lachlan Dale (guitar/effects), Peter Hollo (cello/effects) and Timothy Johannessen (percussion).

On their debut album, the trio draw inspiration from diverse sources ranging from post-metal to middle-eastern modal music. Apsides features both composed and improvised pieces that involve the players layering live-loops, ritualistic-beats and doom-metal style musical variations that progressively unfold and build in intensity throughout the performance.

Everything Is Noise has the premiere, check it out right here: https://everythingisnoise.net/premieres/black-aleph-change-the-orientation-of-their-orbital-axis-with-precession/

Everything Is Noise notes that "there’s no doubt, based on the refinement the band brings to “Precession”, that Black Aleph is ready to make a bold statement in the world of experimental music. Indeed, it may cause the Earth’s orbit around the sun to wobble just a tiny bit as it feels the full thrust of the band’s tectonic shift."

Daf player Timothy Johannessen tells us about the video: "With this video we were thinking back to our first performance, which I mentioned above: a sort of musical "installation" put together for an event at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2018 that involved Lachlan and I seated opposite each-other with the audience free to ambulate around us and between us. There's that, and also the "conceptual" coordinates that I mentioned above too. But beyond that, I think the video and staging is just a really nice way of capturing our relationship and dynamic as a band."

Watch share: Black Aleph - Precession (Live at Bakehouse) - YouTube

Black Aleph’s style has been compared to Justin Broderick, Neurosis, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor - though there is a borderline spiritual quality to the music that comes from the unique instrumentation: guitar, cello, and Iranian daf drum.

The sound is tectonic - apt for a record centred around concepts of orbital mechanics, like the notion of ‘apsis’, which is the points of extreme and least distance between a celestial and a primary body (sun-earth-moon) in an elliptical orbit. A second theme concerns the relationship between light and dark, or more specifically the difference between bodies that emit versus those that merely reflect light - and in-between those that obstruct it.

Apsides was recorded over a number of years by Tim Carr (We Lost The Sea) and mastered by Mell Dettmer (Earth, Sunn O))). Jessika Kenney lends her sublime voice to a number of tracks, as does Natalya Bing her violin.

The album cover artwork was created by Melbourne-based artist Darren Tanny Tan, whose process involves ‘destroying’ a solid surface using various materials and techniques, while the single artwork was produced by the Syrian artist Salah Alkhal.

Black Aleph's debut album Apsides is out 25 October on Art As Catharsis and dunk!records.