In Ritual Ambient, as with most minimal genres, there is a fine line between subtle & brilliantly evocative and boring, pointless garbage. I randomly came upon the work of Holotrop the other day and quite enjoyed his brand of Ritual Ambient. From the couple albums I've checked out so far, the 2014 release Invocation Of The Unthinkable has stood out to me the most. This album utilizes the elements that I really enjoy in this style: subtle percussion, bells, singing bowls, and of course hypnotic (but not ridiculously repetitive), slowly moving drones. Invocation Of The Unthinkable came out as an ultra limited cassette so you know it's going to have a raw sound, but the somewhat primitive tone lends itself well to this style of music and gives it an ancient, shamanic feel (rather than sounding like a shoddy basement demo). Despite the somewhat evil sounding song titles, this release carries an asian/buddhist feel to it, more similar to something like Exotoendo than New Risen Throne (though fans of either artist would likely enjoy it). While the rest of the album is good, the title track really stands out and is an absolute must have for fans of ritual music and dark ambient! Although this unsurprisingly sold out, you can still grab a digital copy.
[ Get It Here ]
I have not yet explored all of his work, but I did really enjoy his most recent release Dukkha which is a 7in split with Nam-khar (and of course is sold out as well, but can be obtained digitally on bandcamp)
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