Norman Records on "The Crystal World"

Link here.

Brett gave this 5/5.

I’m loving the feel of this fucker – lovely thick gatefold sleeves like this are almost enough to break the twelve-inch fetish of a vinyl hound. I’m also loving that this is named after (and the amazing artwork seemingly inspired by) the early JG Ballard book. The first disc here paints the picture of that titular crystal world assimilating everything in sight via doomy dark ambience, black metal soundscapes, heavy industrial drone and frequent electronic supplementation. It’s a seriously bleak scene in a lot of ways, but there’s definitely more than a touch of beauty to be found in it, particularly in ‘Elevations’ which ends the disc. The second half of this opus is taken up by just the one fifty-three minute track which goes by the name of ‘Extinction’ and can probably best be summed up by some combination of the phrase ‘more please’ with the words ‘whoa’, ‘drone’, ‘fuck’, ‘ouch’, ‘devastating’, ‘noise’ and ‘holy’. Probably with some other words between the! m. Singular and stunning – they’ve totally created a world here!