Reutoff / Sal Solaris

Album Title: 
Eisengrau (Beyond The Principles)
Release Date: 
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Label: 
Distribution: 
Review Type: 

Eisengrau, sub-titled as Beyond The Principles, is a co-operation in between two great Russian Ambient / Industrial acts, Reutoff and Sal Solaris. The record will be released in a limited edition of 500 copies only, and it comes with nice yet sober artwork. The work is dedicated to silent formless light that we behold with our eyes closed. It shines beyond any principle, either reality or pleasure. Those two principles, for your information, refer to a psycho-analytic concept of how our inner human life gets guided.

The duo of Sal Solaris is not that known in our regions, I think, but they do have a small but excellent discography. They started as an explorative entity, working with static and autistic sounds of unearthly landscapes, and slowly evolved into their current approach. On this split they present four pieces of sublime Ambient / Industrial that last in between seven and ten minutes. They describe their style as Power Ambient, and who am I to protest?... Their Post-Industrial injected compositions stand for soundscapes of both mental illness and psychic superiority (two states of mind that more than often go well hand in hand), combining sonic waves of uncomfortable spheres with obscure, spacy and sub-electronic clouds of trance-like surrealism. The sometimes repetitive and mechanical coldness goes well with the oppressive atmosphere that veils the whole in a mist of eerie Industrial. Besides, the injection of rather shamanistic, ritual elements (cf. Vivere Non Necesse Est) lifts the whole up to a next dimension of unexplored beauty. The last song, by the way, is a Reutoff-cover, Children Of The Dead, translated in Sal Solaris own, specific post-trance-ambient philosophy. 83/100

Reutoff are a pretty well-known trio from the suburb of Reutov, close to Moscow, and these guys work together since ages. They started with this specific project at the end of last century, and they released a handful of full lengths, several splits, and several hands full of EP’s throughout the years, especially via Ewers Tonkunst. On this split, they contribute with four pieces that last in between eight and fifteen minutes. The compositions bring typifying spacy and trancelike Post-Industrial with a hypnotic but pretty obscure, abyssal approach, characterised by the band’s multi-layered sonic dimensions. The floating, special constructions are darkened by the addition of bizarre samples, and the intense heaviness of several excerpts drenches the whole in a sphere that defines both mysticism and melancholy. They too end with a remarkable cover track, originally by, of course, Sal Solaris, i.e. Na Orbite. 91/100

87/100