Eijra Woon – Sophia
Eijra Woon – Sophia
Cruel Nature Records
Release Date: 26/05/23
Running Time: 26:37
Review by Dark Juan
8/10
I am Dark Juan and I tell you faceless hordes out there about music. I do this is an urbane and witty manner, and often go off on tangents that take you to some absolutely horrible places in your mind’s eye. Ask Rory Bentley or the whole of They Watch Us From The Moon. I have left an entire six-piece American band traumatised by my words and I ACTUALLY LOVED THEIR RECORD! Imagine the horrors I can conjure up when I don’t like someone, or their music, or people who have disappeared rapidly and prodigiously up their own wannabe rockstar arses, or who are disrespectful to us journos or their peers. Dark Juan offers his respect to everyone but by Satan you’ll lose it fast if you’re a total wankstain. Or if you’re Rory or Rob Sutton of team Ever-Metal.com. Saying that, Editor-in-Extremis Simon “None More” Black and owner Beth “I WILL Fucking Fuck You Up So Bad You Will Be Eating Through A Straw For The Next Six Months” Jones occasionally come in for a bit of good-natured ribbing from your honourable correspondent as well. The point being Dark Juan is about love and looking after your friends, loved ones and peers. Be the change that the world needs to see, because it is increasingly becoming a black and frightening planet. When the alternative, tattooed and pierced people take over the world it will be a better place. Especially if I am in charge.
I am currently listening to an artist from Brittany. If you are a regular reader you will no doubt already be aware (mainly because I bang on about it all the time) that I used to live in Brittany, and that one of my favourite Industrial bands comes from Rennes, that being Fange. Eijra Woon (who creates an extraordinary sound composed of Drone, Folk, Doom, broken Electronics and Black Metal vocals) is also based in Rennes and one wonders if Fange and Eijra Woon are aware of each other, because the Industrial, sharp-edged harshness of Fange and the folky, nightmarish soundscapes of Eijra Woon would complement each other beautifully in a live setting.
This four track EP (entitled “Sophia” in a reference to the Gnostics – go on, have a Google) represents a personal catharsis and ranges from feelings of suffering and imprisonment through to relief and deliverance. It opens with ‘Comwrathion’ and this piece has a sepulchral, underground feel – like having been incarcerated in a dank cellar. Folk guitar, extremely harsh electronics and Black Metal vocals combine to create a work that has a curious, extreme beauty, but one with an obsidian, diamond-hard core. Menace and terror slowly build and vocals that seem to be without discernible syllabification (like the demented jabberings of some poor, imprisoned brute) grunt and growl in an animalistic fashion between multi-layered Folk acoustic guitars and then the song ends with a spoken recording of a woman discussing an abduction event as the music fades out.
‘Sophia’ is eleven minutes of pure emotion in musical form. Simple electric guitar and whispering create the mental image of a person being alone with their thoughts in the inky blackness of some godforsaken hellhole, then deep vocals in French approximate the sound of this prisoner speaking out loud in an effort to comfort themselves, but then the dread and the fear start to build, and the voice becomes warped and twisted. As the music builds, so does the pressing terror of the unknown and incarceration and the protagonist’s internal monologue become increasingly self-recriminatory and hostile as hopelessness builds inside them. Or so it seems to my mind anyway. The music changes to an almost pastoral theme halfway through, as if the prisoner is running through memories of a happier, Elysian time in an effort to muster their mental resources but there is an undercurrent of dread represented by a steadily building wall of electric guitar noise overwhelming the thoughts of happier times…
This record is not one you’ll be dancing to anytime soon. It is slow, grinding, deeply idiosyncratic Drone that would be better suited playing in the crypts under Notre Dames to lament the loss of millions of souls than your favourite hostelry or club.
If you like deep psychological trauma in musical form, you’ll quite enjoy the work of Eijra Woon. If you want violent Metal or pure aggression, you won’t find it here – instead you’ll find dining music for cannibals. However, it is not all darkness. ‘Nöör (live)’ is about escape and release and freedom being reinstated. It’s big sounds, horns, and the tinkling of rain in forests and strange, drawn-out electric guitar encapsulates how vast the world is outside of the black concrete cell you have been locked away in. It is sensory overstimulation in musical form – the smallest chirp or tweet of a bird being totally overpowering to one who has been deprived of aural or physical stimulation for a very long time.
Yes, this is very challenging music that reminds this writer of the likes of Cromagnon and Throbbing Gristle where musicality plays second fiddle to raw emotion and untempered sensation. It’s where Black Metal and Folk mix in a wholly unprecedented fashion, where aggression and gentleness combine to form some kind of amorphous new form never seen before. It’s danger and safety at the same time. It is confusing and yet makes complete sense.
It is musical doublethink. And it’s very, very special.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System (Le système breveté d’évaluation des éclaboussures de sang Dark Juan. Toutes mes excuses à mes amis bretons mais je ne parle pas votre langue et Google Traduction ne le fait pas non plus) has been completely confused by the seemingly diametric opposites of experience that the music of Eijra Woon conjures in the old grey matter, but still awards 8/10. Marks are deducted for the very limited audience this esoteric music will find and also because Ever-Metal.com is a Heavy Metal website and this music, although extreme, barely qualifies as Metal.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Comwrathion
02. Y
03. Sophia
04. Nöör (live)
LINE-UP:
Eijra Woon – Voice, diphonic singing, santur, electric and acoustic guitar, percussions, metallic objects, korg electribe.
LINKS:
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