It’s not often that we receive submissions here that go so far as to intimidate us. Sure that sounds a little bad but it’s not. Because it’s a situation where you feel as a writer, you’re not sure that you can do it justice. Such is the case today where we have the latest release by Lecanoscope entitled, ‘Culminate’. The following is noted on their Bandcamp page.
“Seven tracks of cyclic sound excursions. Arcane hymns and poems blended with ancient and modern instrumentation. Neoclassical rhythmic drone soundscapes. Post-industrial dub audio collage.”
Lecanoscope takes the confines of genre classification and completely shatters it to bits. ‘Culminate’ is an extraordinarily well-thought out release that at times blends, ambient, drone, world, ritual and other forms of music. But each of the seven tracks are masterfully produced so that they create an experience for the listener that is pretty “other worldly” and immersive. It’s a bit like being in seven different dreamscapes in a relatively small amount of time.
The attention to sonic detail and the process of writing and recording this release must have been considerably painstaking. Take a track like “Receptor” for example. The listener immediately falls into an imaginative scenario where there’s a vision ahead, perhaps of a tribal rhythmic performance of some sort. But yet there are other styles weaving in and out almost to seem like voices from the past and a sense of looking to the future. I know… that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in and of itself. You’ll just have to hear this. One thing we like to look for in our reviews is the Left/Right panning in the recording. If done correctly, (as it is in this case) going at different paces but still steadily, it really creates a magical, immersive atmosphere.
If this is the type of magic that Lecanoscope can put to vinyl or tape, I can only imagine what this sounds like live in the proper atmosphere. Existing somewhere between Steve Roach and Dead Can Dance – the past and the present, Lecanoscope’s release “culminates” in some pretty uplifting, imaginative work…. devoid of classification but full of character and color some of which they invent themselves.
The Noise Beneath The Snow 
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