I Feel Like A Bombed Cathedral – psychotropic wonderland

May 24 2020

I Feel Like A Bombed Cathedral, “W” (blindblindblind, 2020)

Tony D'Amico archived brainwashed reviews Amaury Cambuzat, blindblindblind, I Feel Like A Bombed Cathedral, Ulan Bator

I am an enormous fan of this latest endeavor from Ulan Bator founder Amaury Cambuzat, as AmOrtH was easily one of my favorite albums of 2019. Notably, this latest release marks the project’s vinyl debut, which makes it the first album in which Cambuzat’s real-time layering has had to contend with actual time constraints. I was not sure how well that would work, as the core Cathedral aesthetic has always been to allow pieces to unhurriedly and organically unfold until they complete their “natural” progression (and the project’s crowning achievement thus far is a piece that stretched out for 40 glorious minutes).

As it turns out, however, Cambuzat handled that challenge quite well. Given the greatness of the opening “Indignation,” it is entirely possible that he simply had a killer 20-minute piece in the vault just waiting for this opportunity to arise, but it is equally possible that he mathematically converted that duration into a fixed number of heartbeats and simply worked from that. While the B-side is admittedly a more minor pleasure, I remain continually amazed by the depth and breadth of what Cambuzat can achieve with just a guitar and some pedals. This is yet another excellent release.

Given that all I Feel Like A Bombed Cathedral releases are essentially composed the exact same way, Cambuzat wisely did not bother to provide much information about W‘s creation or inspiration at all. Instead, he opted for the far more appropriate alternative of creating a black and white promotional video of masked and hooded figures lurking ominously in a bleak winter forest. The video has a very creepy “found footage” feel akin to The Blair Witch Project, which is very much an appropriate mood to convey for W‘s first half (and much of the project’s past work as well).

While I cannot say that I am a huge fan of black metal imagery in general (at least not unironically), the image of Cambuzat as a lone, sorcerer-like figure haunting ruins and stark landscapes is a decidedly apt one, as it both distances this project from more ambient-minded experimental guitarists and emphasizes its ritualistic nature. At its best, I Feel Like A Bombed Cathedral seems to lie somewhere between a trance state and a sort of ecstatic catharsis, as Cambuzat patiently builds harmonically rich and emotionally resonant soundscapes through the exacting accretion of layers.

Much like the similarly hooded Sunn O))), Cambuzat shares a lot of common ground with drone music, yet strives to transcend the form with a more maximalist approach to dynamics and intensity. Unlike Sunn O))), however, the beauty of Cambuzat’s work lies in steadily deepening and darkening harmonies rather than seismic vibrational power.

On the opening “Indignation,” a single sustained note slowly undulates for roughly an entire minute before Cambuzat begins to unfold a slow-motion melody of swelling tones. The piece soon takes on an eerie and majestic feel, but it does not linger in that shadowy, dreamlike state for long, as a bass-heavy heartbeat pulse soon injects a propulsive sense of purpose and forward motion.

As the heartbeat insistently throbs away, the layers of drones sneakily expand like fresh streaks of color in a haunting, smog-blurred sunset. Cambuzat then intensifies the pulse of the piece through rhythmic splashes of chiming chords and that is the point where the incredible intricacy and precision of the piece starts to fully manifest itself, as some chords are deliberately out of phase or dissonant.

It is a beguiling balance of clarity, shadow, subtlety, and force, yet it gets even better when Cambuzat finally stomps his distortion pedal and the piece blossoms into wonderfully roiling sea of shifting, intertwined layers. Even when the piece is at its full power, however, there is the ghost of a submerged melody lurking behind the cacophony. It is a truly masterful feat of patience and elegantly controlled visceral intensity.

The following “Fear & Disorder,” on the other hand, takes a very different direction, as Cambuzat’s web of guitar loops embraces a very hazy and impressionistic tone, evoking a languorous bed of flutes and strings. It is initially an unexpectedly warm and tender piece, resembling a time-stretched and deconstructed Debussy homage, but it gradually transforms into something evoking a desolate, windswept plane. In its final moments, however, it unexpectedly opens up into slow-burning and darkly hallucinatory coda of blackened bass rumble and dissonant smears of spectral guitars that feel wonderfully supernatural. Admittedly, the piece takes quite some time to get to that point, but it is an impressive pay-off nonetheless.

As far as I know, Cambuzat is still fully devoted to performing all of his pieces in real-time for this project, so some feats simply take longer to lay the appropriate groundwork for than others. Viewed in that light, “Fear & Disorder” is a fascinating performance and a bold step outside the project’s comfort zone rather than a composition in need of tighter editing.

When Cambuzat is at his best, however, he easily transcends the challenges and limitations of his unusual working methods: “Indignation” is gripping right from its first note and only gets better from there. In fact, it is downright astonishing that this side of Cambuzat’s artistry has only recently been revealed, as he is a goddamn drone shaman—I cannot think of any similar artists who share his seemingly unerring intuitions for texture, flow, tension, focus, or well-timed slashes of controlled violence. From an execution standpoint, Cambuzat is likely a man without peer.

It legitimately boggles my mind that this project is not more well-known and appreciated than it is, especially in the wake of AmOrtH. As far as I am concerned, that album still remains Cathedral’s zenith, but W is not too far behind and “Indignation” adds yet another instant classic to Cambuzat’s growing pile.

Samples can be found here.

June 16 2019

I Feel Like a Bombed Cathedral, “AmOrtH” (Dirter, 2019)

Tony D'Amico archived brainwashed reviews Dirter, I Feel Like A Bombed Cathedral

This latest project from FaUSt guitarist/Ulan Bator founder Amaury Cambuzat has regrettably been under my radar for the last several months, but AmOrtH recently caught my attention by virtue of its Dirter Promotions imprimatur. Prior to this latest release, Cambuzat had been documenting his amazing solo guitar “cathedral sessions” throughout the year with a series of videos that culminated with April’s Rec.Requiem album (released on Italy’s Dio Drone).

If I had heard Rec.Requiem first, I am sure it would have floored me, as Cambuzat is an almost supernaturally brilliant drone artist. Instead, I encountered this one, which worked out quite well: AmOrtH is somehow even better than its predecessor. I have not heard drone as mesmerizingly heavy and ritualistic as this since I was blindsided by Natural Snow Buildings a decade ago. AmOrtH is an absolute monster of an album.

It is always an extremely good sign when I put on an album and my first thoughts are “where on earth did this come from?” and “how the hell is he doing this?”. After a week of listening to AmOrtH, I am still stumped by the first question and I suspect any answer to the second would feel hopelessly inadequate. Simply put, Cambuzat conjures up incredibly rich and heavy dronescapes with just a guitar, the sound of a heartbeat, and a battery of effects. What he does with that simple palette verges on sorcery, however, particularly on the album’s title tour de force.

At the heart of “AmOrtH” is a sustained drone that feels like it is quaveringly alive—even if nothing else happened at all, that sustained note would be compelling solely from the improbable degree of intensity that Cambuzat wrings from it. Thankfully, that is just the start of his wonderfully deepening and irresistible spell. Even from its earliest moments, “AmOrtH” sounds like a barely controlled storm of howling noise over a slow pulse of processed heart beats. The sheer vibrancy and power of the sounds hits me the hardest of the piece’s many wonderful attributes, as “AmOrtH” feels like it is slowly twisting and burning even as it steadily accumulates more force and density.

Moreover, Cambuzat manipulates dynamics and wields tension beautifully, as there is never a lull or misstep in the piece’s 40-minute ascension. Instead, the roiling noise slowly and subtly blossoms into a harmonically rich fantasia of shifting organ-like tones. It does not quite feel like a bombed cathedral, but it feels admirably close: it sounds like hell boiling out up from the earth in the middle of an organ mass. Words like “ecstatic” and “rapturous” spring readily to mind and “AmOrtH” earns them, but religious transcendence rarely (if ever) comes in such blackened and gnarled form.

Unexpectedly, however, that darkness slowly dissipates and the final third of “AmOrtH” is a warmly beautiful swirl of rippling and shimmering heaven. It is quite an impressive sleight-of-hand and all the more so since Cambuzat manages to do it without sacrificing any of the piece’s power and majesty. It is far from a toothless bliss, as an undercurrent of rumbling, burning wreckage ensures that the idyll never stops feeling like a precarious and threatened one. The elegant balance of light and dark is particularly beautiful, akin to watching a lovely sunrise ascend over a landscape of smoldering ruins.

In the wake of that heaving and scorched transfiguration, the album’s shorter second piece (“Psalm 39”) emerges as a sublime coda of sorts. It is considerably less ambitious than “AmOrtH,” but it makes for a lovely and appropriate come-down, languorously taking shape as a shimmering reverie of slow, elegantly blurred guitar swells. It reminds me a bit of classic Stars of the Lid, as Cambuzat attains a similar degree of radiant, glacially evolving tranquility. By default, it is the weaker of the two pieces, but its most damning shortcoming is merely that it vaguely resembles someone else’s great work rather than feeling like a dazzling eruption of iconoclastic brilliance.

When I initially read this album’s description, I was a bit surprised to see The Theatre of Eternal Music boldly name-checked as the closest reference point, but that legitimately seems like the only logical antecedent for this project. Times have certainly changed since the ’60s, so AmOrtH has zero chance of making the cultural impact of La Monte Young’s revolutionary ensemble. The two projects definitely strain heavenward in similar ways though and neither feels like it shares anything in common with the contemporary drone genre beyond the name. When I Feel Like A Bombed Cathedral is at its best, it genuinely feels like a channeling, a trance state, or a religious experience, achieving an immersive and hypnotic majesty that approaches the ecstatic.

In fact, AmOrtH most strongly reminds me of Sufi whirling dervishes, as their ceremonial spinning meditations have a deep and spiritual purpose, yet they have the outward appearance of a unique and beautiful dance to non-participants. Similarly, I Feel Like A Bombed Cathedral appears to be a deeply personal and ritualistic endeavor that doubles as incredibly striking and powerful art. Both of I Feel Like A Bombed Cathedral’s albums feel like the transcendentally brilliant work of a drone savant, but AmOrtH‘s extended title piece alone captures that vision at its sustained and slow-burning zenith. This album is a masterpiece.

Samples can be found here.