Atrium Carceri "Reliquiae" LP Review

Atrium Carceri "Reliquiae" LP

   Musical mastermind Simon Heath has been unveiling desolate atmospheres of ambient music for close to a decade now. Atrium Carceri never ceases to disappoint the avid listener, creating a cataclysmic scenery, comforting as the solitude found in isolation & empty as the remains of a deserted city. “Reliquiae” flows with a philosophy present in the track list observed by a more keen perception, while the overall essence musically creates a mood complimentary to each conjoined song title. An aural variation is well founded in “Reliquiae” while also maintaining the natural balance Heath so beautifully expresses. You'll find that sensation in tracks like “Floating Above The City”. For a moment, close your eyes & imagine yourself embodied in the unconscious floating outside your body,gazing out over the world & your sleeping self. The vibrations cast shadows of a spacey trans-dimensional trance state drifting through nothingness while an enveloping desolation lurks in the distance.In songs such as “The Long Walk” you sense the shift from the gloomier alley of introspection to the more comforting realizations found through it's inward path of enlightenment. The spiraling sounds throughout it are  symbolic to me of the gradual progression of individual consciousness. Tracks like “A Factory Of Lost Souls” creates the feeling of incarceration. You find yourself in a dingy room where ghastly moans are faint but audible due to the enclosing cell walls of this insane asylum.  The ending sound effect brings to mind the image of a sewer lid slowly being shut as you gasp beneath its murky depths. In “Disassembling The Creator” the ambiance is quite pensive. To me, a concept reflective of the cycles of creation & destruction of our internal & external universe . The clock ticking in the background pulls you into the flowing drones vibrating. The last track“Goddess” for me was reminiscent of the revival of the archaic shamanism long forgotten, the winds of mother nature drift along the magical voice of a female chanting beautiful hymns; a perfect curtain to close Heaths world Reliquiae.