The Ideologic Organ series, of which this is number two, may be curated by Stephen O'Malley of Sunn O))) infamy, but you'd be hard pushed to find a release that was further from the skull-crushing monolithic drone of the cowelled doom-mongers than this. Graceful and haunting, 'Aestuarium' is an album of rare delicacy. Originally released in 2005, it sounds not like the music of a few years ago, but something altogether more ancient, from another century.
Its beauty lies in its simplicity. Without the encumbrance of layers of production or even more than the simplest, sparsest of musical accompaniments courtesy of Kang's measured strings, what the listener gets is Kenney's magnificent voice, clear and flowing. Without distractions, one finds oneself focusing on the nuance, the timbre, the minutiae, making for an altogether different type of listening experience. It taps into the listener on a different level, and stirs something deep. The lyrical content - impenetrable to me as the songs aren't sung in English - matters not: this recordings speaks in the language of sound, and with a rare purity that touches the listener's very soul.
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