| 19 bits fill the almost-71 minutes of the "Grey Disc";
Alarmedly rippling horns underscore the distorted groans, retchings and yelps of agony which pour from The Black Death Jingle. Clock-tickings, junk-band clatter and ethereal vocals wring out a twisted madrigal air from The Dark Abyss laced with dark winds and sounds of sickness and sorrow. Everchanging
Warfields veers through styles and modes with schizophrenic mania; from freeform rock opera, to Gothic moods, to monstrously distorted voices and battle samples, to
eerily quieter hums of the damned, to industrial-strength drones, to thunderous beats... all being subjected to electronic re-alterations.
Blippily off-key Anitra's Dance (0:52) marks the first of several tracks scattered across both CDs from 1997's satirical turn on Grieg's "Peer Gynt Suite". The tribal patter of Haxan is threaded through with warbling electrical entities, then grunting beasties and other sonic fluctuations. Bookended by billowing gusts of noise, the interim shapelessness of From White to White (10:46) is laced with lots of random-activity clatter like jingling, clunking, chuckling, foot traffic, blaring sirens, orchestral occurences, madhouse murmurings tossed in amongst varying semi-musical segments.
Besides the crazed carnivalia of Fellini's Hat, and the location-infused Middle-Eastern romps through Beardsoup in Tangier Parts 1 & 2, other tracks include such diverse flotsam and jetsam as wailing harmonicas coupled with asthmatically hacking cowpokes, accordian passages, "Taps", choral chants, resounding chimes, spooky moods, fizzing soda, gutteral choruses, wackily speed-adjusted womanly yodeling and the drippy, early pre-When experiments from 1983.
The 77+-minute-long "Black Disc" delivers 20 more similarly dissimilar excursions, beginning with the medieval drums and monstrous drones of
Sarood's Temple which segues into the creepy (but short) strings
Fogface (0:33). Animatedly atonal Karius and Baktus serve up a cartoon symphony with squeaky spoken word passages amid dark overtones, then instrumental moods including piano, snares and brass.
More clockwork rings in Death in the Blue Lake - Excerpts (11:33), followed by crashing noises, then neo-orchestral moods ranging from glowering to turbulent. Choirs join the surging bass-heavy symphonic seas, topped by careening strings, blurting bassoons. All slowly quietens to a morose morass of shifting gray murk, from which a concluding round of ticking appears. In a complete juxtaposition,
Ghosts bounces and bounds in a sassy beat-driven bit of tropicana, to be infused with Pedersen's thinly distant vocals and weirdly transmuting motifs.
Several following tracks venture into the tortorous realm of the Black Death (a place seekers of archaic darkness should certainly like to linger), and others revisit further instances of the tumultuous Peer Gynt pieces, as well as veering through psychedelic pop moments, out-of-place acoustic guitar jangles, hospital room electronics, snores in the rain,
typewriter rhythms and the basso rock voicings and xylotones of closing track,Veil & mere.
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