UNDER THE SNOW - The Vanishing Point

Under The Snow is the musical project of Stefano Gentile (founder of the Silentes label) and Gianluca Favaron (Lasik Surgey), with contributions from Pierpaolo Zoppo, a longtime member of industrial band Mauthausen Orchestra. Back in 2011 they had already released an intriguing debut, "Delta", which carried out an ambient experiment suspended in emotional limbo, somewhere between ecstatic drones and a skillful dosing of elements.

We find them again just a year later, with another entirely digital release, free to download from the label's website, and with a new collaborator: Giuseppe Ielasi. The form and structural cohesion of "The Vanishing Point" make clear just how much the project's attitude has settled into its founding elements, within a kind of dislocated ambient capable of slipping past spatio-temporal boundaries and enclosing itself in a space all its own.

"The Vanishing Point" is a slow, droning, hypnotic liturgical procession, in which we witness the construction of foggy, ethereal temples. The guitar lines and samples proceed by osmosis, merging into a hazy grey darkness of small anxieties. The dominant sacred organ on "Second Point" reveals itself free and ethereal after the cutting introversion of "First Point". Solemn in its spirituality, it hints at a spiritual uplift that nonetheless gives way to an underground swarm of insects.

The twenty-one minutes of the closing title track, meanwhile, let us witness the sublimation of the very concept of a sacred place, leading us through the uncertain boundaries of a cautious, muted noise, fearful of and alarmed by whatever lives beyond its own being.

A contemplative record, closed within its own spiritual winter, patiently awaits its unfolding. Though perhaps too linear in certain forms, it reveals a glassy soul of rare fascination.

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05/03/2012