A text explains: ‘Recorded in an underground location containing vitrified cement tanks’; it is further specified that the capacities of these tanks varied: some enormous, others smaller, and that they had openings both above ground level and below at depths of five or six meters, resulting in a truly unique acoustics.

It was 1986, and this tribute to Lovecraft—since the Cthulhu specialists will have understood the title—presents industrial music in its most suggestive and extreme form, not in the sound but in the approach. No instruments, just metal plates, pipes, air compressors, all captured with two microphones on a mini-studio cassette… Indeed, it really feels as if biologists or scientists have placed microphones in some kind of dark basement to try and capture traces of life. And it lives in there, it feels as if strange creatures are going about their daily lives through activities and rituals that no one truly understands: it scrapes, it creaks, blows, reverberate… Is a team of malevolent dwarves activating their demonic forges? Is a beast dragging its rusty claws along the walls? Or is it a sacrificial ritual during which hordes of dwarves hammer corrugated metal sheets to invoke their deities?

Pilgrim in search of melody move along, you won’t find any here, even though with such an unmusical arsenal, the group manages to extract almost tribal rhythms (the excellent ‘Pneumocorrugato’, ‘Hymn to Ra’), forms of non-organic breathing; everything here is just layers, rustlings, scrapings, dying echoes, but you, mystic in search of trance, stop; this opaque soundtrack exudes an ultimately non-aggressive atmosphere in which one willingly immerses oneself to let the darkness seep into the pores of the skin, merge with our organs, infiltrate our soul… What lies on the other side? No one has returned to tell.

A perfect witness of the audacity, the sense of experimentation, and the creativity of an Italian industrial scene that is too underestimated because it is pure, devoid of any temptation for recognition and wide dissemination, ‘Al-Azif’ is not without its longueurs, remains arduous and uncompromising in its approach, clearly not intended for all ears, but it is also one of those records that, beyond the music, offers a truly sincere esoteric approach (Capricorni Pneumatici define themselves as an esoteric research project).

A physical and spiritual trip that prompts self-reflection, magnificently restored by passionate labels that thus contribute to the preservation of a unique musical heritage. Imagine the setting of Tarkovsky’s ‘Stalker’ but with the lights turned off…

Translated from French. Click here for the original review on GutsOfDarkness.com