Black Aleph
"These three musicians weave Persian classical and ritual sounds together with a blackened doom sound for music that captivates me immediately."
- Cvlt Nation
Black Aleph are an Australian trio whose exploration of deconstructed post-metal and cinematic doom draws from Middle Eastern modal traditions.
Their debut album Apsides features layered live loops, ritualistic beats and doom-metal style musical variations that progressively unfold and build in intensity throughout the performance.
Black Aleph’s style has been compared to Justin Broadrick, 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.
Black Aleph's 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 represents the potentialities of reconstructed post-metal and doom - and proof that heavy, cinematic and hypnotic music still has much to offer as an artform.
Black Aleph’s debut album Apsides is out 25 October on Art As Catharsis & Dunk Records.