Release year: 2024
Label: Zoharum
This is another one of those tricky Zoharum releases to review. Not so much because of the audial contents themselves, but because of the nature of this release.
You see, Before And After Silence was recorded in the 1990’s, years and years before the first official Nimh release, and sees its first release now. That’s what makes this a tricky release to review. Should it be judged solely on its musical merits? Should the nature of the release somehow be taken into account? Should the sheer age of the material somehow be taken into account?
We’ll opt for the first, and judge Before And After Silence solely on its musical merits. And luckily, it doesn’t make it too hard for the reviewer to do just that.
In essence, Before And After Silence is a work of industrial ambient. One can append the prefix dark, if one so desires, for the material balances somewhere on the ambiguous line between “normal” and “dark” ambient, sometimes stepping into either territory. At times, there are also surprisingly prominent elements of noisier industrial, without ever going into actual industrial noise territory. And at yet other times, there are pseudo-melodic elements, without the material ever becoming melodic per se.
In other words, Before And After Silence approaches its chosen form of expression from a multitude of directions. And still it manages to keep a relatively uniform, coherent style into which all the different strands are integrated quite seamlessly. And this is what I mean by the album not making it hard to judge on musical merits alone: it has both focus and quality.
During its best moments, Before And After Silence consists of dense, echoing, repeating, droning layers of synth aided and abetted by secondary layers of controlled industrial noise. Take for example the fourth track (all tracks are untitled); a brief but superb excercise in claustrophobic, decidedly dark ambience.
Considering that this material was recorded years before Nimh stepped into the public limelight, Before And After Silence is a pretty impressive piece of work. It speaks of talent and vision, and an understanding of how to utilize the abstraction, minimalism and meditative nature of (dark) ambient to craft engaging pieces.
Only Death Is Real 