What made the decision for me about going to Beyond the Redshift was the double-bill of AmenRa and Syndrome. I saw AmenRa recently, preparing festival-goers in the Netherlands for the all-out drone of SunnO))), and they were suitably noisily entrancing, but even more interesting for me is Syndrome, the ambient, droney project of AmenRa’s Mathieu Vandekerckhove. With a fairly small set-up but a vast and atmospheric sound Syndrome is evocatively cavernous, while remaining subtle enough to attend to the fine details of gently-picked melodies amidst the soundscapes. All of which is often complemented by some fine images which perfectly match the sound: monochrome, expansive visuals with delicate, almost insignificant movements which bring to life the scale and sense of profundity.
Actually, though, part of what I’m looking forward to most is seeing some bands which I don’t know well (or haven’t even heard at all yet) but which have made themselves known to me from reputation amongst friends or a general buzz in the usual places online. Being more familiar with Gorgoroth and the unique Wardruna than God Seed, I’ll enjoy assessing Gaahl’s return to all-out black metal vocals.
Similarly, I’ve generally been more concerned with Justin K Broadrick’s churning industrial noise in Godflesh than with the more introspective-seeming Jesu, so that will be another world of atmosphere (backed up with implications of powerful noise) to explore. Another musician who is better known to me by an alias is Dirk Serries, otherwise recording as meditative, Nadja-collaborating, slowburn sombre drone wanderer Fear Falls Burning, a project which seems to have drawn to a close. Coming in the wake of Serries moving on to release of two different sets of recordings under the headings Microphonics (sets I-XXV) and Stream of Consciousness (so far four collections), this is another chance to see an established experimenter into heavy sounds taking the opportunity to redirect or redefine an approach to their music.
A brief listen to some of the other bands on the bill unearths some more intriguing propositions, with different sounds and taking different approaches to their music, but all with a dramatic sense of scale: the sparkly, unearthly shimmer of God is an Astronaut promises a hazy, dreamlike experience; sleepmakeswaves visit from Australia with their ‘love songs about delay pedals’; and Bossk’s postrock hymns will have been honed by touring with Old Man Gloom then A Storm of Light before playing at the festival.
From Syndrome’s finely drawn, thoughtful but widescreen projections, to God Seed’s return to old school values, to Jesu’s fiercely controlled metallic epics, to whatever grand scheme Cult of Luna are plotting, Beyond the Redshift promises a sensory overload, absorption into the heaviest of atmospheres.
