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AXONE: Casus Belli Release year: 2002 Format: 8 cm CD-single Tracklist: 1: Manifest Destiny Total playingtime: 21:00 min General Facts: Axone is the musical project of C.Donovan of the new American label Somnambulant Corpse and Casus Belli is his debut. Axone is apparently still seeking for a sound, and Mr. Donovan has experimented with different approaches on this release. Review: Once again, a new release in the 3" CDS format. It seems that this format is getting more and more popular these days. Anyway, Casus Belli consists of three tracks of music that I find difficult to label but I guess it could be called experimental Dark Ambient with a Post-Industrial touch. It starts with the track Manifest Destiny. An organ makes its entrance and a sampled voice soon starts speaking. There are also some electronic sounds brooding in the background but it is almost sublime and never really comes forward, and the track is mostly centred around some kind of organ ambience. The track continues without any bigger changes and sampled war-marches and battle charges gradually attach themselves to the music until it ends. I think this track has a rather dry, early in the morning academic touch. It's of course my own interpretation but that does not stop me from ventilating it. It does not make any bigger impression on me and I am left quite unaffected. I find the second track, Psychogenetic Terror to be better. It has a more experimental approach, and Donovan has been playing around a lot with different sounds and samples on this track. It contains much more silence than the first track and it has a somewhat sneaking approach at times. Sometimes a silence is built up only to be destroyed by some contrasting tune just a while later. There are many different sounds to be discovered, which make this track more varied than the first one so naturally it becomes more interesting. It ends in a quite nice way with a distant piano playing a solemn tune. The third track is the one that I think fits best within the Dark Ambient definition. It is definitely inspired by Lustmord with its sweeping blackness and darkness. It is a great track even though it does not reach the standards of Lustmord. I also feel that the samples have been just a bit over-used. All in all, the tracks are professionally structured and it is quite a good debut. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Five questions to Axone: ECTONAUT: Please introduce Axone to our readers. What is Axone all about? For how long have you been doing this and for what reason? AXONE: Although I have been working with sound off and on for years, Axone as a project is very young, founded at roughly the same time as the Somnambulant Corpse label (which I also run), February 2002. It is my best attempt to achieve an "encounter" with the totality of the world free from moral judgments, as much as is possible, and present it in sonic format. I of course realize that such a proposition is predestined to fall far short of the stated goal, but within the context of my own life and its layers of conditioned responses, both conscious and unconscious, and its many prejudices, that is my goal musically with Axone. Specifically I seek to view human history from an amoral yet sentient perspective, one divested of care or concern for Enlightenment-era concerns - i.e. "human rights". This requires a sort of "schizophrenia" on my part, as I am otherwise a sensitive and compassionate person, but I realize that "the cosmos" cares not one wit about the struggles and suffering of our festering species. ECTONAUT: Tell us something about the tracks on Casus Belli. Did you work with specific methods when you composed them? Is there a concept behind this release or anything else interesting that you think we should know about Casus Belli? AXONE: The tracks relate to each other in certain ways. Manifest Destiny is a sound-picture of the United States' conquest of North America and attempted genocides of the various pre-existing aboriginal tribes. The picture presented, I hope, is one of tragedy, beauty, and the inevitable way things seem to get done on this terraqueous globe. Psychogenetic Terror is an aural presentation of the often neurotic cycles of genetic in-group/out-group identification as they make their way through the tortured human psyche. Casus Belli is a paean to the coming crisis of resurgent eugenics vs. a decadent moral order brought about by the "progress" of science & technology." ECTONAUT: How would you describe the music of Axone to completely new listeners? Do you feel that Axone belong to a certain genre? Are there any bands that you think you can relate to soundwise and conceptwise? AXONE: Well, Axone is still in its infancy as a project so I am exploring many different sounds. You might call it "post-industrial" since it is in a way one of the bastard-children of such groups as Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse, SPK, Lustmord, NON, etc. etc. I lean towards an ambient aesthetic, with some dynamic elements and noise touches. I like deep drones and I do some sampling from film and other sources. I do all my work on computer, using some manipulated recordings of my own as well as sounds generated by "analog" software synthesizers. ECTONAUT: What is most important in music according to you? How do you define quality music? What are your musical influences? AXONE: Most important I think is obsession and the sincerity that comes from it. Aside from that it becomes very subjective, but I personally love all "post-industrial" music, from noise to power electronics to death industrial to dark ambient. As for influences they are pretty varied as I listen to a very wide variety of composed sound. I still consider "classical" music to be the true music, the pure expression of the mother-culture in her prime. In this time of degeneration, sound work is a reflection, a footnote most likely, less and less differentiated like the world in general. I don't mean that to be derogatory, simply a statement of fact as I see it. As in the last great dark age, we stand as pygmies upon the shoulders of giants. ECTONAUT: What plans do you have for the future? Are there any new Axone releases planned? Anything else you would like to add? AXONE: Next on the horizon is a track I'm working on for an upcoming compilation on Somnambulant Corpse. The compilation will be entitled The Outsider: an aural channeling of H.P. Lovecraft and will feature tracks from Axone, Tugend, Post Scriptvm, When Joy Becomes Sadness, Schloss Tegal, Hollowing, Murderous Vision, Bestia Centauri and a debut track from Kuru, my other young project focused on death ambient. I'd just like to add a thank you for taking an interest in what I'm doing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Click here to contact Axone |
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