Lithuanian cultural blog radikaliai.lt reviewed album TMA by Kragrowargkomn.

Darkness, slowly, unfolding into darkness

Experimental funeral doom / industrial / drone one man act using overdriven 6 string bass, synthesizers, live – recorded raw samples of drums, cymbals and metal surfaces from mountainous Slovakia with a rather difficult name Kragrowargkomn has its debut album Tma (Slovak, “darkness, gloom, void”) with 61 minute terrific slow music.

Kragrowargkomn (it’s a one man band) says: “As such, darkness does not exist — it is merely a lack or absence of light. Abstract phenomena such as darkness or void are here and known to us, but we can never really perceive them. Where there is an absence of harmony, euthymia, and melody, there is plenty of space for creeping doom rumbling, industrial bustle, and black metal dissonance turning music into a rough noise mass.”

Yes, you can call this music “a rough noise mass”. Not an easy listening, though, but it rewards. The songs, of course, are quite lengthy, but not boring at all (if you are not a fan of AC/DC, though). It reminds me of classical WINTER a bit, and of SUNN O))) sometimes, but Kragrowargkomn has its own unique style, which is much slower and heavier. 

The music, speaking about “rush”, “fallout”, “pressure”, “insects”, “noise” and “darkness” (if I translated the names of the tracks correctly), is convincing. Do expect darkness, which slowly evolves in to nothing else, but the same darkness… Which, as it was said, doesn’t exist…

One of the strongest experimental albums I’ve heard

As we see, Tma touches one of the main philosophical and cosmological questions about “eternal” or “primordial” darkness/light, probably beyond categories of “evil/good”.

Videoclip and photos for Tma were made infamous place in northern Lithuania, called Hill of Crosses (Kryžių kalnas). Once, it attracted attention by cult neofolk band Sol Invictus, now you can see unique shooting in Tma.

Could this be a hint? Tma (darkness, void, gloom…) in our heart, belief, world? In Christian, Catholic world. Hill of Crosses is a place which KGB tried to destroy for year. It survived. With people thankful to God bringing their thousands of crosses into one place.

Listen to the album once more. Don’t hurry to have all the secrets coming out very fast. But they will. It’s the music with inner surprises. Somebody could call this magic. I will just leave myself to the magically sounding Slovak word (which you might understand if you speak almost any Slavic language) Tma.

Summarizing it all, the album has a strong philosophical, cosmological side as well as great, impressive music and interesting visual side. It feels that the album was made not perfunctory, but with deepest insights. Will wait for the second opus of Kragrowargkomn.

Full original review is here.

Italian Neural magazine reviewed The 8 bit Prometheu by Dj Balli + L’Allievo + MC Shell8bit. Enjoy nice reading.

The 8 bit Prometheus

Dj Balli, with the help of Allievo and MC Shell8bit, presents this 17-track album for the Slovakian label Urbsounds. The compositions are rigorously titled “séance”, and progressively numbered. Underscored by the declamatory voice, the sounds are like the low resolution of old electronics games such as the Game Boy, amplified and followed by rhythmical elements that are somewhere in between post-techno, breakcore, and gabber in style. In The 8-bit Prometheus, a subject prevails over the others: a melting pot of circuit bending and rave culture influences.

The track also displays certain contamination between noise and sampled elements, the result of an artisanal mash-up. All these movements pervaded the underground spirit of squats and illegal events. The collision between a musically rough approach and some abstract and conceptual energy is a strong point for Balli. He is a polyhydric artist and a deep lover of counterculture, who has contributed to the literary field too, with books and articles for the “noise and politics” fanzine. Aesthetics and cultural development for him go hand in hand and the mix of different genres is naturally connected to his research, resulting from marginal but highly prolific sectors of artistic production. Dj Balli is the author of a book, Frankenstein, or the 8 Bit Prometheus, an arcade version of the famous novel by Mary Shelley, a mediumistic session where he evokes the spirit of Giovanni Aldini (1762-1834), credited as the source of inspiration for the modern Prometheus. Dj Balli is definitely a multimedia experimenter: his narrations crossover into a performance version, a radio-play with live performances, which took place in the basements of Galleriapiù (Bologna, Italy) and was broadcast live on www.ohcristo.com. We also need to highlight the project’s graphic design by Tobia Maschio. An illustrator permeated by the same counter-cultural mutations as Balli, his design is vintage and modern at one and the same time, in perfect harmony with the spirit of the edition.

The 8 bit Prometheus reviewed by Neural.it

You can find the original review here.