Skorneg
Foehn 

Malignant Records 2014

Minimalist and barren ambience creates a sonic vision of the cold Canadian North from where Skorneg originates.  The track, Skroneg, centers around oppressive walls of stoic sound and sharp cracks, like whips to mark time in this desolate soundscape.  Distant Banshee-like wails arc across the ominous mountains of droning noise.  Reverberating melodic currents hum at the outer fringes of the song's latter stages.  It's like the fading hum of a church bell after it has rung.  Shuddering mechanical horns rise from a calm sea of icy gasps on Serac.  Mechanical synth and chirping drum machine snaps are cross-cut by sounds similar to backwards snippets of guitar.  The elements lend the track a more grounded feeling for the listener.  The pace of the track quickens imbuing it with a sense of urgency, while more intense, I feel this detracts a bit from the deep-space mood set by the previous track.  The title-track regains Skorneg's astral footing with its electrical buzz and pillars of droning sonic light.  The sounds wash over you like the wave of radiation from a pulsar, you are scorched and reduced to a lifeless cold.  The last of the four tracks on Foehn is Sherpas.  Skittering shards of noise dance out from your speakers and then coalesce into a foundation of white noise which gives life to rhythmic clicks and stellar synth.  As the track progresses the droning snyth becomes more insistent and an industrial beat surfaces, which sounds like an empty pipe being struck and then echoing.  Skorneg creates sonic constellations that are dualistic in nature, sparse in instrumentation, yet dense in the forcefulness of those barren sounds.  This is cold and dark ambience, like the unfeeling void of deep space.