HERBST9's Blog

found at heathenharvest.com

Herbst9 - The Gods Are Small Birds, But I Am The Falcon
Thursday, January 15 2009 @ 01:00 AM PST
Contributed by: Lysander



Artist: Herbst9

Title: The Gods Are Small Birds, But I Am The Falcon

Label: Loki Foundation
Genre: Ritual Ambient

Track Listing:

01 The Lament Begins
02 Must I Die? (Because Of My Holy Songs)
03 Threshold Of Tears
04 Enenuru
05 The Gods Are Small Birds, But I Am The Falcon
06 White Ashes (Black Smoke)
07 ...And Everything Around Him Answered
08 Shaking Ground
09 Ilimmu


I remember being struck by Herbst9's ability to create ambient music when I first came across them three years ago. It's rare to find a band with such thorough dedication not only to the music they create but to the themes behind it. Their latest work is yet another impressive addition to their catalogue, expanding on their obsession with Sumerian history: its people, ideas and spirituality. And yes, it's becoming increasingly common for dark ambient and death metal bands to cite Sumer's gods and magic as influential to their dour and brooding music, but for Herbst9 such an interest is a genuine fascination. This is not just another ambient record using the masque of Sumer to slap preternatural artwork on an album while the band tweets and drawls on ad nauseam for over an hour - each work of Herbst9's is an inspired dedication to ancient Mesopotamia, and their latest album hones this ardour to a satisfyingly sharp point.


Whereas the band's previous albums have focussed heavily on the gods, kings and ethos of Sumer, their latest seems to be dedicated largely to one person. The cryptic song titles and subject matter refer to the goddess Inanna and her worship through the eyes of the priestess Enheduanna, a Sumerian author who spent a large portion of her life writing hymns to her. The album title is a direct quote from one of the period's many dedications to the goddess though it's unclear whether the songs here are meant to be a homage to her or a representation of her religious rituals and it's most likely that they're a bridge between the two. Inanna is quite a favourite of the band - her name appearing in its Assyrian form Ishtar on the track listing to Buried Under Time and Sand but now, three years on, she has an entire album addressing her. I can't say I don't lavish the idea - if you're going to write an album in the form of an hour-long incantation then who better to make the subject than an age-old goddess of sex and warfare? Anyone else seems like a waste in comparison.


All nine tracks on The Gods are Small Birds don't feel all that separate from each other. In the band's previous works there was an obvious break in the theme between each song, though now they're more strung together as separate movements of the same opus. "The Lament Begins" ushers us in with soft, shamanistic vocals before the deep drones come in to start the conjuration proper, and they hardly leave us for the majority of the album. Herbst9 take a far more vocal tack on this album with many of the songs incorporating chants and distorted vocals along with the wall of sound that we often find ourselves enclosed in. According to the rubric that came with the promo, some of these audio samples are field recordings taken from authentic sacrifices and rituals, and they're at their strongest in numbers like "Threshold of Tears" and the excellent "Enenuru" which is simultaneously beautiful and chilling. As the songs progress we become used to hearing pained wails drifting over the drones and each number builds to a steady climax before leading us in to the next part of the album. The ambience is thick with spirituality and sorcery, and at no point do we dare question its potential.


It's not as if there's no variety in the songs though: the distinction is just not as stark and obvious. The title track is a much more subdued but sinister number to those which have gone before it with soft, slow beats shuffling in the background while wraithlike vocals twist their moans around the samples; whereas other tracks such as "...And Everything Around him Answered" are more direct in their approach, employing gusty, windlike rushes and the tap of slow tribal percussion before building into an ocean of distant screams. Ilimmu is the most melodic, with the drones shifting measure while soft chimes uplift us, bringing an end to what has been a dizzyingly vivid experience. It is a venture which is sometimes elevating and sometimes unsettling, but always intense.


The Gods Are Small Birds is such a rounded piece of work that it's hard to pick out anything negative to say about it. It's more of a uniform, linear piece than previous discs, having more in tone with the older albums of Amon and the newer offerings from Finland's Halo Manash. However, Herbst9 manage to create ritual ambient with even more texture, more flavour and more richness, with each musical layer being a perfect ingredient in their grand musical edifice. Along with other long-established greats such as Raison d'être they can proudly rank themselves at the very pinnacle of their field, and their latest album is perfect justification of such a position.

 

found on

http://monkeyhouse-recordings.co.uk/JK2CMS/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1368&Itemid=30

Herbst9 – ‘The Gods Are Small Birds, But I am the Falcon’ CD (Loki Foundation)
Written by Grégory Dejaeger

“Enlil gave me the heavens and he gave me the earth. I am Inana! He gave me lordship, and he gave me queenship. He gave me battles and he gave me fighting. He gave me the storm wind and he gave me the dust cloud. He placed the heavens on my head as a crown. He put the earth at my feet as sandals. He wrapped the holy ba garment around my body. He put the holy sceptre in my hand.
The gods are small birds, but I am the falcon”


An exaltation to Inana


This new album with a somewhat enigmatic title lifted straight off a Sumerian text from the Third Millennium B.C. is none other than the fourth opus from German ethno-ambient legends Herbst9, released today, as is their custom, by Leipzig-based industrial powerhouse Loki Foundation, who really should need no introduction if you’re reading these lines. To say that this new effort from the masters of ritual industrial music was eagerly awaited by those in the know would be a blunt understatement and this time again, Frank Merten and partner-in-sound Henry Emich have come up with yet another brilliant gem, the kind that will be revered as a milestone of the genre ten years from now when we’ve all long forgotten what the term ‘dark-ambient’ ever meant in the first place.



Following a pattern already developed on previous offerings From A Dark Chasm Below, Eta Carinae and, more importantly, Buried Under Time And Sand, this new offering delves deeply into pre-Islamic Middle-Eastern mythological territory. Like said above, the title is a reference to one of the eldest manuscripts ever found, the exaltation of Inana, the Sumerian goddess of sexual love, fertility and warfare, whose descent to the underworld is thought to be one of the first exemplifications of the rite of fertility and eternal recurrence. Some other subtle references to literary sources probably little known outside of academic circles are interspersed throughout the nine tracks on offer here but what’s really puzzling is not so much this apparently marvellous feat - which any idiot with an internet connection and some basic knowledge of search engines would be able to accomplish, including yours truly - as the sheer ability with which our sonic archaeologists have managed to come up with an album so fresh-sounding, all-encompassing and simply mind-blowing as this in a genre that is per se rather stylistically limitative. Listening to Whites Ashes (Black Smoke) or the eight-minute epic that is the title track, one almost feels transported back in time to the hot and dusty streets of Lagash or witnessing some primeval ceremony atop the wind-blown great ziggurat of Ur.



The Gods Are Small Birds might rely less heavily on percussive elements than before (the ominously telluric Shaking Ground being a notable exception) but that, too is testament to the pair’s ability to penetrate the very core of their musical endeavours and extract only those substantial elements which give their music its timeless quality without sounding trite or cliché, a rather not unheard-of crime within the confines of ethnic ambient music. Simply put, it is difficult today to see who, apart from the Italian one-man project Vestigial (who shared musical duties on a more-than-recommended split 12” vinyl with Penjaga Insaf – a Herbst9 side-project, as it were - on Loki Foundation’s sister label Power And Steel) can lay claim to their seemingly unshakable position at the top of the ethno-ritual pyramid.

 

http://www.side-line.com/reviews_comments.php?id=37740_0_17_0_C

Herbst 9 – The Gods Are Small Birds But I Am The Falcon (cd Loki Found)

Next to several 12”, a dvd and a 7” this is the 5th full length of the German duo from Herbst9. Herbst9 became masters in ambient and in times of after-Halloween, their music for sure has a deep impact! What I like with this project is the elaboration of their pieces. There are really a lot of little details running through their work, which injects diversity and fascinates the listener from start till end. Dark electronic treatments and spooky whispering vocals are directly pulling us into the essence of this new opus. Some kind of icy flute sounds are completing the opening cut. The next track just goes on the same line bringing the listener in a mysterious sonic voyage. I’m not daring to say that we’re close to a climax on “”Threshold Of Tears”, but the echoing, spoken vocals are really scary and simply push the border of any human kind to an extreme. Herbst9 seems like they love to explore what’s behind this border and that’s precisely the point where dark ambient becomes genius! “Enenuru” is one of these pieces where you’ll find all the ingredients of sublime dark ambient music. The slow and repetitive sequences mixed with some piercing and tormenting sounds, plus the spooky whispers are just a fascinating experience of cinematographic music. The track “And Everything Around Him Answered” goes on the same line and simply confirms the strong potential of this release. The next track coming up entitled “Shaking Ground” leads us throughout a more explicit ritual trip where some bell sounds accentuate an obscure, sacred character. I’m not familiar with the entire discography of this duo, but this album is definitely one I’ll keep in my.
Highly recommended for the lovers of extreme ambient sensation!
(DP:9)DP.

 

from brainwashed.com

Herbst9, "Enenylyn"
Written by Lucas Schleicher
Sunday, 05 September 2004
Drone Records
This German duo must have some understanding of what it means to be universal. Their sounds are of sources that are completely unknown to me (though I can describe their qualities) and yet they can evoke a sense of comfort and complete familiarity. The way that "Mletkin" begins, I was sure that I was going to face more of the faceless. The sounds on both of these songs begin darkly, as though the demonic and evil were central to Herbst9's music. As the sounds progress, however, light and simple keyboards play steady one and two note melodies that fade and drift between eachother. Harmonies begin to phase into the body of found sounds, sacred melodies, and quiet rattles and soon after, it's difficult to imagine anything even remotely dangerous or unbearable. Enenylyn is a beautiful mixture of the seen and the unseen, the light and the dark, or the mundane and the sacred. "Mletkin" begins as an uneasy whirl through a long and empty shaft; only medical light illuminates the walls here and what waits at the end of this drop is black and grievous. A strange trembling sound fills this shaft until, at last, the fall ends and it empties into a perfect space filled only with the most healing of light. The frog sounds and cosmic rushes of sound all mesh together with the aquatic rumble of enormous caverns and starlight moans. The movement of the entire song is one of life and death. "Mletkin" begins as an undefined mass and, in its attempt to find itself, opens a wound that spills out the most wonderful music. All this only to fade away into the undefined again. "Tynemlem" continues by picking up the aquatic sounds from side one and translating them into a slightly less dense piece of music. Again, it seems as thought Herbst9 likes to move between concepts, never allowing a sense of fear to linger for too long, and never letting the aura of life in the keyboards stand alone. As a strange mud or thick liquid boils in a cauldron, a slow steam builds in pipes layered just beneath the ground and pebbles roll about on the floor through the volition of their own will. Just as new and recognizable sounds begin to breathe themselves to life, a faint and strongly emotional melody begins to cycle in the background, growing louder with each repetition. A river of natural and synthetic roars, groans, and hushes sketch themselves over this melody until the piece collapses over the edge of a waterfall in a sudden and explosive death. Once again I find this isn't enough: I'm wishing that these fifteen minutes could be expanded into a full fourty or fifty.

 

Herbst9 vs.
Z'EV, "Through Bleak Landscapes"
Written by Simon Marshall-Jones
Sunday, 03 February 2008
Looking at it objectively this collaboration between the veteran American 'industrial-tribal' percussionist Z'EV and the German ritual dark ambient duo of Frank Merten and Henry Emich, aka Herbst9, seems a perfect recipe for a successful collaboration. The idea of H9's deeply harmonic and ritual dronescapes supported by Z'EV's richly rhythmic and complex percussion is something of a mouth-watering prospect for me.




Loki Foundation

Indeed I am happy to report that the result more than lives up to the promise: the percussive authority of Z'EV's rhythms are an excellent structural counterpoint to Herbst9's beautifully dense and deeply subterranean freeform synthesiser drones, whistles, scratchings and scrapings. H9's music is the darkness from the deep and hidden places of the world made substantial, the inhalations and exhalations of the very earth beneath our feet, and the steam and bile of nature's eruptions; Z'EV's contributions are the audible pulse and heartbeat, a measure of the inner moods and caprices of our planet. It is a benighted alien world down there, far from the light and warmth of the sun and rarely glimpsed by humans; coldly cavernous spaces inhabited by troglodytic chirpings, scrapings, creakings, skitterings, and demonic mumblings, hugely amplified both by the cathedral acoustics and the imagination. It is also the seismic upheavals and the unseen rockfalls, the slippages of faultlines and the forceful opening up of fissures. Add in to the mix a certain sense of endarkened and heated closeness, along with an oppressively hellish weight, both in terms of the sheer heavy physicality and the layers of aeons that have piled themselves on top of each other ever since time began—the latter being especially reinforced by the earthiness of Z'EV's percussive backdrop, propelling one backwards to a more 'primitive' era, perhaps when the world was younger and less seismically stable.


It is certainly very darkly evocative and unearthly, bringing to mind all the above and more; there is plenty here to spark the imagination. The music is a constantly shifting tableaux of deep dank caverns, dripping water, disembodied eyes staring out from the Stygian gloom, legions of shuffling creatures in untold numbers and the glow of ever-burning fires suffusing the smoke-filled subterranean environs—plus it is everything I imagined a Bosch painting brought to life would be like: a spine-shivering nightmarish blend of the real, horrific, and phantasmagorical.


Moreover, one of the more pleasing aspects about this is the seamlessness with which the two sets of artists have integrated their contributions into the other's. People could be forgiven for thinking that they all worked together in the same studio rather than the thousands of miles apart they actually were. It is pleasing to hear an album where no single element is allowed to either overpower or undermine any other; the music develops along natural, organic, and cooperative lines, resulting in a completely holistic musical entity, in a reflection perhaps of the bleak subterranean world it describes. The music is both lean and spare and possessed of a sense that it contains nothing extraneous or superfluous—just like craftsmen the artists have carefully sculpted their material, retaining only the most essential elements and rejecting everything else.


For my part though, the ultimate test is whether any particular album can bear repeated hearings without it becoming palling and tiresome—I must have heard this album about four or five times during the course of writing this review and I have to admit that it worked its rhythmic ambient magic every time and I have no doubt that it will continue to do so.