Published by Alessandro Violante on May 16, 2018
If this is the first time you listen to Mater Suspiria Vision, prepare yourself to enter into an articulate imaginary world made of witch house music, visionary art-horror movies (directed by Cosmotropia De Xam) and mystical-lysergic drawings. In this parallel universe, it’s easy to get lost and maybe this is the best way to appreciate a music which asks to the listener to abstract himself from the real world to reach hallucinatory states.
666, its umpteenth emanation, is just the the last block in a long series of pieces of the puzzle that Phantasma Disques has created along these years and, it should be specified, it’s the first album not made as a soundtrack for a movie directed by Cosmotropia De Xam. This is the first case after Antropophagus, released three years ago and here reviewed.
As far as music in concerned, the album is nothing more but a series of minimalistic and repetitive electronic music tracks filled with samples and bizarre vocals (sung by Rachel Audrey, who also played as an actress in some De Xam movies, as well as in the new Phantasmagoria II), but what gives an added value to 666 is the imaginary which is evoked.
The opener Paradise now invites us to close our eyes and to enter into a state of altered perception. It’s an acid paradise, in which the canvas is painted by the lysergic brush strokes of the synthesizer, but already with the following Black rain, they leave space to minimalist patterns, in which a slow yet constant 4 / 4 cinematographic rhythm evokes the set of a never directed movie. No matter if there isn’t a movie conceived behind this album, the whole of MSV music seems to be conceived for one, and this album is another clear demonstration. There are the ghostly, whispering, altered vocals, giving a certain kind of mysticism to the songs.
More Gothic and lysergic is Naja christyi, but the way traced is always the same, and the album goes on with eloquent song titles such as Schizophrenia and Incubus, this one being one of the best moments in the album. After the short vocal parentheses of Satan oh Satan, the acid synthline typical of MSV soundtracks for Cosmotropia De Xam movies come back. There’s once again the acid synth, there’s once again the invitation to leave reality behind, the listener is dragged in a fictious paradise from which he goes down again, accompanied by the disturbing voice of Rachel Audrey, throuh vicious elevators finally bringing us the the underworld, until Satan’ house, our final destination. This last one is a classic song having a slowed-down, lysergic, mystical, cinematographic tempo and sound, trademark of the project.
At the end of the journey, the listener is possessed and the ending song Devil in slow motion evokes, in the mind of who has seen Cosmotropia De Xam’ movies, some techniques already used by him. Minimalist rhythms silently proceed on the background, while the emphasis is put on the synthetic drawing, to the almost sacred atmosphere, to the mystical-religious sounds. The character-listener, living an ecstatic experience, slowly walks and time slows down too, as well as it happens to the montage in Cosmotropia De Xam’ movies. Just as the movie characters, the listener crumbles in a state being the arrival point of the journey. This isn’t a real liberation: it’s just the passage from a state of slavery to reality to that of possession, but lived as liberatory act, liberatory from the use of will and from the fulfilling of his duties.
The same way the plot always repeating itself, also Mater Suspiria Vision albums play on the concept of “repetita iuvant”. That’s what the listener want, and that’s want MSV gives him. Nothing more, nothing less.
Label: Phantasma Disques
Rating: 7