Ensemble Pearl
Ensemble Pearl

It’s difficult to find an excellent drone album that is much more than just the prolonged extension of a sound, and even more difficult is to find a drone album that never shows signs of fatigue, boredom, or unjustified length. I’m talking about a drone album that is not ONLY interesting and beautiful but is also worth listening to multiple times.
It’s a genre that, depending on the mood of the day, can strike, envelop, transport, oppress, disturb, or bore you to death, leading you to immediately choose something else. A bit like ambient, worse than ambient.

Yet, I have found a great recent album of drone of the kind one should (and more), which I love dearly and would listen to again and again. I’m talking about the self-titled debut of Ensemble Pearl, a successful formation composed of well-known faces of the genre: Stephen O’Malley (Sunn O))) ), Atsuo (Boris), Michio Kurihara (Ghost), and William Herzog, where every participant in the project has masterfully combined their idea of sound with that of their companions.
Perhaps this is the secret to the success of the album. Because the drone of "Ensemble Pearl" is extraordinarily complex, nuanced, tremendously engaging, and unsettling. It combines psychedelia with ambient, passing through explosions of violent noise and stoner-rock. It travels through galaxies taking you by the hand, drawing universes filled with splendid colors, immersed in the darkest of blues. 
All memorable pieces, all with excellent sonic impact.

It takes just the pinnacle of the album, the masterpiece "Island Epiphany," where the sound flow becomes more and more vicious as the minutes pass, to understand that we are facing a true journey. Sounds that immediately transform the listener into Ophelia lost among the waters of the unconscious. Even in the sweetest moments, like the atmospheric and calm "Giant", the power does not disperse, does not decline, does not perish. But it’s also worth mentioning the dark psychedelia of "Painting On A Corpse" as well as the excellent "Wray" or the opener "Ghost Parade", as heavy as a boulder, the ticket to the sky that will be built later. More than on a train, however, it feels like traveling on slow elephants. And that’s the beauty. Because while you slowly flow while listening, the sky above you, with all its stars, will begin to compose, decompose, move, and dance, infinitely. 

To close the circle, the monolithic, splendid, "Sexy Angle": the traumatic farewell to the galaxies to return to Earth. One penetrates a tunnel made of shadows, the way out towards metaphysics. The traumatic return to life. 

To be listened to strictly with eyes closed or in the dark.