Summons of Shining Ruins: The Deadly Sins

See you in hell: A study in grayscale drones.

Analog Path is a new Japanese CD-R label that is lucky enough to have "The Deadly Sins" as their catalogue number one.

The tape drones of Shinobu Nemoto are darker than on his previous releases, guitar lines are more obscured, drowned in murkiness and hiss. The Deadly Sins feels like a study in aural grayscale drones. Of course you can still identify this as guitar ambient. But some things have changed in Summons of Shining Ruins’ vocabulary: Nemoto uses less fuzz on this release and the tracks develop slower but more steadily, the guitar drone crescendo cliché of starting at low volume and developing a wall of sound cannot be heard at all. It is also refreshing that The Deadly Sins features eleven tracks in one hour and only one of them is longer than seven minutes. The sounds are as diverse as the nature of the sins that were set to music: from the brittle "Envy" to the bittersweet "Greed" which could also be called "Cocteau Twins Peak"…

If you prefer Thomas Köner, William Basinski and Main over this year's hot new laptop guitar drone act, then this release is for you. I urge you to check out everything else Mr. Nemoto has done before, too. You'll hear that Summons of Shining Ruins does not rely on gimmicks or digital processing and prefers to keep his signal chain analog or as he calls it himself "post-binary". To me, this does not matter but it surely adds to the depth of the material that is presented here.

The Deadly Sins sounds like tape heaven. This is really worth it! See you in hell.

By René Margraff

Homepage: Shinobu Nemoto / Summons of Shining Ruins
Homepage: Analog Path Recordings