Black Zone Myth Chant acts as a dark interpreter for chemical elves in the steep sided, sunless psychedelia of ‘Voyage Sacrifice’ for Félicia Atkinson & Bartolomé Sanson’s faultless Shelter Press, under the slightly altered Black Zone Magick Chant alias.
Commendably, and temporarily sacrificing his consciousness for the good of your trip, on this release Maxime Primault aka BZMC has realised some of the most phantasmagoric sounds in his entire catalogue, which now stretches back over ten years and includes notable highlights in his psych drone project as High Wolf, and pulsing rhythmic noise as Iibiis Rooge. It’s perhaps testament to Shelter Press’ irrepressible vision that they have coaxed out this project’s most potent and far-out work, bar none.
Gutting out his screwed hip hop and dancehall inspirations in three durational parts embracing pitch black, miasmic abstraction, perceptions of time and rhythm become dissolved in the process, aided by a severely down pitched vocal growl that absorbs the listener into its tantric pacing on ‘Lightless Mountain’, holding the senses under as deathly bells peal for someone or something, and scattered metronomes occasionally accentuate the temporal smudge, spilling over into the seasick brownian slosh of ‘Incineration of Thoughts’.
But like the potential of any trip worth the effort, the darkness and the sublime become entwined in the 22 minute counterbalance of ‘Where will we meet when our ashes are spread in the wind’, which, thru its convincing, iridescent detail and lack of a ? in the track title, seems to describe from the inside, rather than speculate, a divine space or spirited beyond as the result of lived experience.