CORE

'Сердцевина' - Senmuth (5/10)

After a brief repose from Senmuth's music, I again travel into this Russian one man experimental project's discography, restarting my journey with a fairly unremarkable, but surprisingly catchy piece of electronic music. As an artist that all-too-often overlooks the importance of memorable melodies in his work, 'Сердцевина's better material is instantly likeable, although the majority of the album still passes by as being nothing more than mediocre.

While Senmuth has crafted countless albums of similar sounds before making 'Сердцевина', the album does distinguish itself (if only a bit) for it's focus on structure, whereas most of Senmuth's work in this style draws more upon ambient sounds. Still, while some tracks build up very nicely, one can certainly expect the similar sound, and things still come across as being a tad listless. 'Сердцевина' is graced with a few more inspired moments however, such as a surprisingly beautiful acoustic guitar solo in 'Координаты Сингулярности'.

The majority of the music here is electronic-based, although the sounds are arranged in such a way to give the same ethnic, exotic vibe that composer Valery Av has based this project around. Fans of calming, slightly melodic music should appreciate this, although the album lacks the substance to be worth an extended experience.

This album gave me a lot of problems when it was released by Senmuth. After having added it to the site it caused a wrong formatting of theweb page due to the fact that the Russian characters are no supported in the album's titles so I had to rename the original title "Сердцевина" into its google translation "Core".(in Latin characters Serdtsevima).

After the very ambient "Reconstruction of Infinity" there's a bit of return to the metal side. The tracks are still instrumental and some of them can be considered ambient, but the main element here is that the electronic background noise of the first album re-appears here and there. Of the three principal components of Senmuth's music, the ethnic is the one less relevant in this album.

I'm not 100% sure, but looking at the tracks titles I have the impression that this is a follow- up of the previous "Reconstruction Of Infinity", even if this "Core" is harder and darker.

As often happens with Senmuth, the first track is a short intro. "Escaping Eternity" is an ambient track, but you can expect a metalist explosion sooner or later. What comes is not an explosion but a drum sequence over a fixed note. This is the skeleton of "Output form the Core" on which after about one minute a simple melody comes to send the listener to the usual darkness. Those two moments alternate until the end.

A gapless passage brings "Out". A bass keyboard note similar to a didgeridoo that stops leaving room to a low volume chord. Just a bit more than one minute of spacey ambient, then suddenly "Topography Of Outland" starts. This track is of the ethnic kind. Sounds of sitar and percussions mixed with what I think is a very distorted guitar at low volume. In the second half the track becomes more melodic with the addition of a piano.

"The coordinates of the Singularity" lets intend that we are in a spacey landscape. There's some acoustic guitar, a thing that was missing from Senmuth's albms since a long time. This track has a Krautrock flavor. Today, after having been listening to Can I hear Krautrock everywhere, however the guitar solo reminds to Amon Duul II. A very good track.

"Gallery of Life" starts not dissimilar. The percussions are ethnic but the guitar has a very electronic sound. With some more noise it could be a track coming from the first albums, but the only noise comes from the guitar's distortion. All the rest is a sort of ambient balanced by powerful sounds. The central interlude appears to me too disconnected from the rest.

"All Of Nothing" is the first real metal track after a consistent number of albums. It's opened by a heavy guitar with some of the old "industrial noise" in the background. Valery makes some "mute singing", or at least it seems so. I think this track can be defined "experimental".

"Sketching reality" is another short interlude. This time there is some silence and this track fades in smoothly but stops suddenly to give room to the unstructured and absolutely non- melodic "Co-Creation". Post-metal seems an appropriate word here, even with the ethnic interlude that's backed by the distorted guitar, anyway.

"Awareness of Completion" is the last interlude, opened by an unusual (for Senmuth) 12- strings guitar, or its electronic equivalent. This is a nice interlude made of overdubbed guitars over a bass note like in Pink Floyd's "Obsured by Clouds".

The closer is electronic with sounds that seem taken from bands like Kraftwerk. The melody and the chords are not as dark as usual, unless until the distorted guitar comes to the foreground. There's the usual alternance, like this was a mix of two different songs. Also this track can be considered exeperimental in some way. Four minutes of this alternance and the album is gone.