Deathprod - Occulting Disk (2019)

Formidable dark ambient se’er Deathprod returns like a rare comet with the keeling “anti-fascist ritual” of ‘Occulting Disk’ - his first solo album in over 15 years - offering a life-affirming warning to the power of negative energy.

Proceeding 2004’s canonical classic ‘Morals And Dogma’, the Norwegian sound design auteur here gathers his uniquely dematerialised productions made in Oslo, Cologne, and L.A. between 2012-2019 under the auspices of an “anti-fascist ritual.” While it’s tricky to identify how that admirable intent relates directly to the music, it’s safe to say that ‘Occulting Disk’ at the least suggests an ideally brooding headspace for reflection on that pressing topic, and, for that matter, whatever else is fuelling one’s existential angst.

Practically picking up where he left us at ‘Cloudchamber’, the incredible closing track on 2004’s ‘Morals And Dogma’, with ‘Occulting Disk’ Deathprod develops his mastery of elemental sonics with the vision of someone who has accessed an atavistic, arcane source of knowledge or energy. Working like an alchemist with his custom-built AudioVirus system, he divines and relays a deep sensorial clarity from a near-permanent state of occlusion, seemingly sharing the visions of a man who has spent the past decade growing his beard on an unforgiving mountaintop amid never-shifting clouds, but who can see clearer than anyone scurrying about, miles below.

Opening with the fog horn blasts of ‘Disappearance/Reappearance’ to continue a core Deathprod theme, the album’s seven ‘Occultation’ parts unfold in a series of dissonant aeolian synth howls that cast Helge Sten’s magick at its most elusive and yet present, tending as carefully to the music’s noisy pinnacles as to its deathly lacunæ, with the potential to turn your body into a massive resonating vessel until his incredible ‘Occultation 6’, and then dissolve your atoms into iridescence on ‘Occultation 7.’ And that all seems like preparation for the Copernican revelation of ‘Black Transit of Jupiter’s Third Satellite’, where he practically immanentizes the eschaton in a jaw-dropping display of electro-acoustic abstraction.

For both new lambs and long-time disciples alike, ‘Occulting Disk’ is an unmissable jump-off point into supernatural, metaphysical dimensions, and one of those rare records that really puts everything else into perspective in light of its radical nature.