Demdike Stare’s debut album ‘Symbiosis’ was released in late 2009 and explored Sean Canty and Miles Whittaker’s interest in re-appropriated found sounds of all colours and origins. Fast adopted into the ‘Hauntological’ canon, the album evoked the noises and spirits of distant yet oddly familiar locations.
The first of a vinyl trilogy set to be released through 2010, “Forest Of Evil’ is a more unearthly affair, split into two long tracks that summon the presence of the pair’s geographical, musical and spiritual ancestors.
The ‘Dusk’ side unfurls from a cacophonous piano sequence into an anguished drone that nervously builds into an audible nausea, pushing through until it finally opens up into crisp, clear percussive terrain.
‘Dawn’ embodies a more disturbed persona, rumbling through free-jazz tape loops and thunderous drums before adopting the kind of narcotic, claustrophobic terrain often visited by Shackleton, a heaving low-end pulse and tribal colours producing dense, dark and relentless tapestries.
And then, out of nowhere, a widescreen coda, edging out of total despair and darkness and into something that you could just about convince yourself, even for just a moment, reflected light and offered hope.