First time vinyl pressing of a brilliantly realised field recording-based, ethno-industrial ambient excursion from the ever-inspiring Nocturnal Emissions. This reissue seems to have been in the works for some time, so it's hugely coincidental is should pass through the door the same week as new records from Brannten Schnüre, Militia Aurora and Jota Solo, all artists who seem to owe some kind of debt to the haunted-collage approach of Nigel Ayers. Invocation of the Beast God is build around various location recordings of 'night creatures' - bats, owls, insects, foxes et al - and layers and loops them into unrecognisable, drone-like patterns that invariably glide, swirl and chirrup in strangely satisfying ways, a true palimpsest of sound. As we've seen with other releases this week, the influence of this kind of approach is now fairly marked (without it, we might have no other way of describing a group like Brannten Schnüre), and the 'noon-at-two-o'clock' shadow zone of Invocation... feels strangely prescient. 'Time-dilated', 'crepuscular', 'dreamstate' are terms we hear regularly now, and could just as easily be used to describe a record made over 35 years ago. No doubt Ayers was on to something here. Along with their peers O Yuki Conjugate, Nocturnal Emissions remain one of the defining innovators of British post-industrial ambient sound. Invocation of the Beast God is unequivocal in that fact.
FFO: O Yuki Conjugate, Brannten Schnüre, Zos Kia, Coil, Bruce Gilbert, Phew
