Kassette / Reue um Reue Tonträger / 2014
C60, lim. ed. of 50 copies, hand-numbered
Both
SCHNEE and M.E.M.A. are side-projects of the Italian Black Metal act
ENSOMHET 777 (aka Riccardo Z.), whom some of you will know from the
excellent tape released some years ago on Licht und Stahl. While
retaining the folk and atmospheric elements already present in E777,
M.E.M.A. leaves behind all the standard "metal" parts like drums and
distorted guitars to focus on warm tohmetian soundscapes, mixing them
with Cylobian IDM to unique effect. SCHNEE,
in itself the follow-up to M.E.M.A., is at the same time colder and
more personal (the first track, a requiem for Riccardo’s beloved dog
Koki, is a masterpiece of icy, lonely sadness), but does come back to
distorted guitars in the end with the black-gaze eponymous last track. This
split is the final epitaph of both projects, and the perfect companion
for the dark winter evenings of outside coldness and inner warmth…. Or
is it the other way round?