Artist: Sky Burial
Album: Chapel Image
Release date: 1 October 2017
Label: Wrotycz Records

Tracklist:
01. Chapel Image

 

It’s been a while since the last time I reviewed a Sky Burial album. But it’s one of these projects which are difficult to forget about, even when it is quiet about them for a longer period of time, because each release by Mike Page is like an epic journey, like watching the Earth from the perspective of the stratosphere, when you get the bigger picture. Literally and metaphorically.

This time we get only one monumental track lasting 45 minutes. “Chapel Image” came out through the effort of Wrotycz Records from Poznan, Poland. Iwona and Szymon produce about 2-3 releases a year, yet you can always be sure of the high quality and – what’s perhaps the most important – their honest and unconditional love of each and every record they work on.

And what’s not to love about “Chapel Image”? Maybe the cover as I really find this picture rather ugly. As for the music though, once again we get an epic ambient form in equal proportions deriving from the dark branch of the genre, the ethereal and the noisy/experimental one. The music is waving, slowly changing shapes and atmospheres, you don’t even notice when the turbulent “earthly” noise transforms into a spectral journey into the unknown. It pulsates slowly like the cosmos combining the massive drones with the multitude of different sounds and effects, natural and digital.

You may think of dozens of expressions to describe Sky Burial music, but “intimate” or “austere” definitely are not one of these. Michael Page surely knows how to overwhelm the listener with his vision and this album proves it once again.

Written by: Przemyslaw Murzyn