It’s been a while since I premiered a video on Headphone Commute. And, I suppose, it’s been a while since I wanted to premiere a video. This is a complex format for this outlet of the music medium – we want to add here to the sound, not subtract. In the case of Pepijn Caudron’s project, known as Kreng, it’s even more demanding to complement the story. Since he appeared on Erik Skodvin’s Miasmah label in 2009, Caudron has painted dark and eerie pictures, instilling fear, dread, and outright horror feels. He is no stranger to that cinematic sound, with more than a few soundtracks to his name for film and theater. He last appeared on my radar with The Summoner over a decade ago, and with his latest, he returns with even more occult and dismal sound. So yes, I can just close my eyes and see the film behind my eyelids, that may not even need a visualizer of some sort. But leave it to Erik to create the video for this “master of tension, melancholy, and the deranged” with an all-encompassing experience. It doesn’t have to draw on any concrete concepts or explicit scenes – it leaves the mind to wander and get lost. And this is where the danger waits for you around the corner. So do you dare enter? One way to find out…
Starting with “You Are Here”, the listener travels through a vacuum of spacious minimalism and edge-of-your-seat tension. Within the journey, we are pulled and lured towards a mystic inner core and beyond, encountering drifting fragments of old-world nostalgia on the way: echoes of empty jazz bars sit alongside hellish, Hieronymus Bosch-like scenarios. Surrendering to the album reveals a surprisingly reflective beauty beneath its darkness; it’s a true home-listening gem that unfolds like a Lovecraftian cosmic horror-mystery in the way only Kreng could deliver. Forget everything you know and enter the secret door…
The full album, titled Wormhole, is out on May 8th via Miasmah, available as a digital release and on limited-edition black vinyl. Fans of murky stmospheres, uncomfortable textures, and experimental terror, by the likes of Joseph Bishara, Lustmord, and Colin Stetson (especially because of his bass saxophone) would be totally in love. Leave it to Miasmah to keep us on the edge of our seats once again. Pre-order on the label’s Bandcamp.
