18/06/2024
ARCHITRAV - "WELK" # Dark-Ambient / Drone / Abstract / Dark-Neoclassical #
Behind the name Architrav is the German Michael Belletz, a self-made musician free from musical constraints and rules of any kind, attracted since childhood by the electronic sound and creatively inspired since 1994 by his own sensory instincts and the momentum of his feelings that, especially in the past, guided his music towards exploratory goals never precisely planned and all to be discovered. Architrav, a solo-act present on the scene since about 2000, is not Michael's only alias: since 1997 he has been the creator of the IDM / Electro / Industrial / Ambient project called Mnemonic - supported until 2009 by Sebastian Schulz - also founding the solo-act Sühne Mensch, discographically productive since 2022 and oriented towards an Industrial / Minimal / Power Electronics style. During the early years of the same 2000s, he was also the interpreter of the solo project Experimental / Abstract / Ambient - now no longer active - called L.iet, later becoming a duo with the collaboration of the musician Kurt Bogenholtz. The artist was also the one-man IDM / Electronics project known as Last Gambit, active around 2011.
Through the pseudonym Architrav, the protagonist expresses a transversal sonic module, hyper-evolved and difficult to circumscribe in a specific range: analyzing the entire discographic repertoire of this particular project from the 2007 debut to today, we can distinguish episodes - based on the different albums - that encompass the imaginative charm of Ambient, the enigmatic obscurity of Dark Ambient, the boundless experimentalism of Industrial and, to a lesser extent, the elegant electronic intricacy of IDM, plus the 'mental journeys' of Minimal-Techno. Architrav's songs are entirely instrumental performances characterized by a dark, evocative, magniloquent and melancholic-mysterious melodism that generates musicality full of introspection and isolationism. In the music of this project, the abstract-cinematic-surrealist aspect is also strongly perceptible, combined with an orchestral minimalism with Neoclassical references that translates into spectral symphonism. The tracks are sonic illustrations played using a wide range of keyboards and software-digital instruments that generate overlappings of atmospherically dense and airy processed pads, crossed by essential noise, field recordings and - sometimes - by sampled sections of whispered spoken-words which Michael defines as "more or less fragments of a voice that cries out plaintively into the world".
The percussiveness, where present, is martial, solemnly downtempo.
Here's how Architrav describes his project and the music he creates through it:
> "Architrav is a one-man Dark-Ambient project dedicated to dark, atmospheric soundscapes.
Architrav endeavors to combine drone-like textures, interwoven structures with orchestral elements to create an immersive and haunting listening experience.
There are certainly no words that could describe my music that haven't already been used 1000 times by other musicians.
I could clichédly say: dark, atmospheric, organic, confused.
It's always difficult for me to describe my own music. Everyone hears, feels or interprets something different. I prefer to leave that to outsiders".
The official discography of Architrav lists the following releases:
"Arctic Museum" - album ( 2007 ) / label: Polymorph Records ( DE )
"Rendezvous With A Green Fairy" - album ( 2011 ) / label: Halbsicht Records ( DE )
"Marode" - album ( 2013 ) / label: Halbsicht Records ( DE )
"Panophobie" - album ( 2021 ) / label: Ant-Zen ( DE ) + Halbsicht Records ( DE )
"Welk" - album ( 2024 ) / label: Ant-Zen ( DE ) + Halbsicht Records ( DE )
Architrav describes his albums with these words:
> "Arctic Museum" describes an expedition through the Arctic Ocean.
> "Rendezvous With A Green Fairy" describes the use of absinthe and its intoxication.
> "Marode" is the sonic realisation of an abandoned and decaying house.
> "Panophobia" deals with various phobias.
> "Welk" describes the creation and death of all life".
Conceptually, the new album "Welk" metaphorizes the ephemerality of life, exalting with lucid awareness its inexorable path towards decline and, therefore, death. Not desperation, or aversion to the most feared event considered the end of everything, but only an awareness that exalts the caudic nature of everything that is born and that by the laws of Nature is subjected to degradation and, therefore, to extinction. Architrav focuses its gaze precisely on the theme of mortality and the gradual, inevitable deterioration that leads to it, finding in this warning a contradictory charm and a philosophical cognition that are musically transposed into eleven songs capable of penetrating in the recesses of the mind, leading the listener into a Dark-Ambient / Drone / Abstract / Dark-Neoclassical music schemes made of fog, estrangement, profound inner reflection, shadows, in which every glimmer of hope is contrasted with the merciless reality that unites the fate of every creature touched by the spark of life, in the infinite cycle of birth, existence, death.
Tracklist:
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"Weg Der Betroffenen" > Low pads, initially distant and attenuated, slowly spread like a leaden mist, until they become expansions of dense and suggestively arcane sound, in which we hear noises, sinister echoes, abstract noise, chorality created by keyboards and feminine spoken words pronounced as if the voice was dialoguing with the soul, all this punctuated by martially downtempo drumming.
"Sinnkalt" > Rippling, dusty modulations merge first with a second block of oscillating sounds like a vision observed under the water's surface and then with a third section of dark, mesmerizing pads, which rise with austere slowness, incorporating skeletal string melodies, surreal noises and staccato downtempo scansions with an abyssal timbre.
"Eine Hand Voll Nichts" > The intro's long minor-key pads, similar to a hissing air current, gradually intensify, combining with ghostly orchestrations of sampled strings, large layers of synth-chords, vinyl 'clicks' and epic choralism: this union creates a solemnly dark, arcane sound, in which a segment of tonally low and harsh chant can be heard which, together with the martial downtempo percussiveness, adds considerable atmosphericity to the whole.
"Der Separate Mensch" > Black and sinister like an ocean abyss on a moonless night, the introduction of this song later evolves through suggestively choral pad sections, combined with essential symphonies of keyboard chords, severe downtempo drumming and hoarse vocals pronounced in the form of dark whispers: the result is a powerful sound full of majesty and evocativeness, a sonic portal that leads to a parallel dimension.
"Werden Und Vergehen" > The ebony extension of the initial chord extends to infinity, intersecting a subsequent dilation of pads with a rigorous and magnificent bearing, fragments of ominously whispered vocals and downtempo drumming, creating a cluster of superbly dark keyboard sounds, suspended in a chimerical dimension, which pe*****te the subconscious, dominating it, overshadowing it, suggesting it...
"Veitstanz" > An essential low organ scale darkens the sound, generating a symphonism full of melancholy and mystery, subsequently intensified by the pale harmonies emitted by the synths, by the downtempo martiality of the drumming, by substrates of pads and, even further on, embellished by an angelically feminine and desolate chant that captures the soul, dissolving among the abstract noise of the ending.
"Geistesgift" > Low keyboard chords in the background move slowly, lethargic, awaiting the elegant piano counterpoints that create autumnal harmonies, joining the subsequent, choral pads, the evocatively whispered spoken words and the refined string sections, all this in a strongly melancholic and shadowy sound context.
"Dornenweg" > Solemnly dark, threatening like the sky before the storm, this track is based on imposing low-pads that emulate an epic chorality, on which the martial downtempo beats of the drumming rise, rustles, reverberated noises and dark whispers.
"Todeswund" > A black and vaporous rumble slowly propagates its branches, cloaking the surrounding space in absolute darkness, enclosing within its coils mantric vocals, arcane echoes, intense sections of choral-pads and, further on, subterranean-austere scansions of downtempo drumming.
"Die Eigene Sterblichkeit" > Flows of dark energy pour into a lagoon of nocturnal sonorities: the keyboards emit layers of high-density pads and others with choral recalls, forming an obscure whole marked by screeches, metallic noise, melancholic piano notes and a severe, martially downtempo rhythm.
"Welk" > Eerie bell tolling, the cawing of a crow, footsteps in the background, sporadic songs of nocturnal birds, evoke a foggy and cemetery-like landscape, sensations made even darker by multiple sections of minor-key chords, by the minimally dark-decadent symphonies of the strings and by the more full-bodied and choral ones of the synths, combined with muffled noise, abstract sections of suffering vocals and heavy downtempo drumming beats.
Conclusions:
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The eleven elegies of the tracklist are the sublime distillation of sophisticated electronic alchemies devoted to the darkness and of an extraordinarily effective mind on the sonic-psychic-figurative level, that of Architrav.
"Welk" is a seductive-ecstatic interior contemplation that involves hearing, soul and senses, leading the listener on a deeply meditative sound path that will show him the progression of the phases of Existence, in which there is no space-time perception, material consistency, drama, joy for birth, or pain for death, but only absolute perfection and the search for beauty in a natural order of factors that inevitably leads to extinction.
Michael Belletz has created a colossal album of shocking, statuary splendor: the world must know it.
