Espiritus Inmundos/ Ogro Rec. El Hijo de la Aurora : Lemuria (PER,2009)****
Breaking apart from Don Juan Matus, drummer and producer Joaquin Cuadra with (electric / acoustic) guitarist Manolo Garfias has gone into the studio with Arian Lora (production, theremin) to form this new band El Hijo de Aurora who have recorded this new album with 8 musician friends, including some members of Reino Ermitao and El Cuy.
The result is something which expands the view of what usually brings a doom heavy rock and jam psychedelica style to a new progressive form with many different tensions. Like DJM, the band is still drawn to horror tensions in movies and mostly the darker or challenging side of the occult, philosophy or astral esoterism (names mentioned as influences on their myspace site were Rudolf Steiner -for his book about Lemuria-, Gerald Gardner, Nietzsche, H.P. Lovecraft, Aleister Crowley,..).
The conceptual subject in different parts is the story of the rise and fall of Lemuria, the earliest empire from which there still are some records or memories of it's existence written down or told around the area where the island used to be.
Like the previous two albums of DJM the concept expresses itself like a musical movie based upon some thematic source that encompasses literature, philosophy and vivid images, guided now and then by a speaker or at least one fragment of a spoken thought.
On the intro, it is as if Lemuria is recreated as an image with whispery vocals and slowly developing doom guitar sounds.. Then hardrockish guitars expand this moodily with great electric guitar independency following the doom core rhythm, with some moody effects to it, expanding in the next guitar/drums dominated track. Then the spoken word from some movie introduces the next doom guitar track, which is led by a heavy female guitar vocalist (Tania Duarte from Reino Ermitao) ; it also has additional organ. The improvisations which occur here are a fine mixture of psychedelia with a trance-doom core/underground, getting more psychedelic by remixed reverb and loop-, noise/electronic sounds effects.
The next track is more common (progressive) hard rock styled, which includes doom bass, vocals and organ improvisation. The second part of it is acoustic with some slide guitar effects, and soft Spanish vocals. The last part, a different image of Lemuria, probably is that one after it has sank in the sea. With only some bass theme different voices create a mood as if they come from the dead, with some cello-like sounds, a very filmic experience. With very emotional electric guitars the last theme is a long dramatic ending, which include some backing vocals singing along.
A convincing experience.
