Cranioclast
Iconclastar (Green) Icons No I. - VI.

THE REVIEW

“And even stranger are the Nazi bunkers of the Atlantic Wall, many of which still stand, and are larger than one would expect. Cathedrals of the space age, they defy the surrounding landscape like lines of Teutonic knights, and serve as excellent examples of cryptic architecture, where form no longer reveals its function. They seem to contain the codes of some mysterious mental process. At Utah Beach, the most deserted strip of the Normandy coast, they rise on the wet sand, older than the planet. During the visits I made with my agent and his wife, I would obsessively photograph them.”

James Graham Ballard

It is from the imagination of the English writer of apocalyptic science fiction James Graham Ballard that the mythological post-industrial epic of the Cranioclast begins, a duo from Hagen, a small town near the Ruhr coal basin. The names of the two members are unknown: they have renamed themselves Sankt Klario and Soltan Karik, anagrams of the word Cranioclast. Their career took off in the early '80s when they released the powerful Koitlaransk in 1985, accompanied by the live cassette Ration Skalk. Amidst industrial rumbles and clangs, the Cranioclast manage to create here a kind of dark and heavy language, a reflection of their geographical area of origin. There are numerous "Ballardian" quotes present in the reissue booklet, and the Cranioclast, in a rare interview with the Italian magazine Deep Listenings, declared that Ballard had helped shape their imagination. It’s no coincidence, I believe, that the Teutonic duo created such original music while being labeled in the industrial context. Germany is the homeland of German Cosmic Music and experimental groups like the legendary Faust. In my opinion, the pinnacle of their art is reached with Iconclastar from 1992: the album is divided into two chapters, one published by the Italian label Musica Maxima Magnetica by Luciano Dari and the other by the American label Dom. The music consists of long hypnotic drones that manage to transport the listener into a deep, other dimension. Perhaps my preference slightly leans towards the Dom record which, with its minimal and sidereal dark-ambient, reaches levels of sonic transcendence that I've only found in Zoviet France. They've disappeared for some time now, remaining shrouded in mystery. We only care that someone in Hagen has conspired in the dark, delving into our subconscious and bringing out the most hidden archetypes.