Northaunt - Barren Land

Artist: Northaunt
Title: Barren Land
Country: Norway
Catalogue number: TTR 015
Released: 5 July 2008
Format: Cassette
Running time: 59:00

1. Dying Day / Dawn and Ashes (MP3)
2. A Silent Battle
3. Kapp Farvel (MP3)
4. Whiteout
5. Laid Bare Beneath the Stars
6. Just Another Cold Spring
7. Lost Days
8. Varghjerte
9. The Fire
10. Shadows over the Barren Land (MP3)
11. Winter II (BONUS TRACK!)

(2 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5)

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Description

A landscape of sound. Norse dark ambient / Atmospherics.
Recorded on the Artic island of Spitsbergen, completed early 2003.

Reviews

“Barren Land” is the second full-length release from Northaunt, a release that returns the listener to the icy floes of Norway, not only figuratively presented but also literally sampled woven into a poignant ambient work that is a worthy heir. Seeking to underpin humankind‚s intrinsic relationship with nature, the music delves far more than simple reverb and endless drone; melodic guitar performs contrapuntal to glacial drifts groaning as giants, evanescent lisps of male and female voice grace the skies like aurora, plaintive piano swirls in the eddies of gelid and industrial storms.
The sound is sumptuous, the sampled atmosphere is crystal-clear, fermenting an ever-evolving stereo experience buoyed through the minutiae within each sculpted locations. Overall, the album‚s tone, while melancholy, is not oppressively dark, nor is it too gloom-shrouded for that matter, leaving the mood pleasantly doleful. An organic mutability infuses the album, each track stands apart from another, and within itself gelid textures explore and evoke the Antarctic Ocean currents and lonely land it surrounds. Lovers of high quality and individualistic ambient music from labels such as Cold Meat Industry will not go unrewarded should you pick up this gem among the snowfields.
- Auralpressure.com

In my opinion “Barren Land”…is a really beautiful album with a lot of emotion. Full of nature-inspired ambient which is cold and dark at times, but which is also accessible, through its flowing and melodic character. I really like the environmental field recordings which are used and the minimal piano sounds which gave tracks like ‘Dying Day/Dawn and ashes’ a pleasant melancholic mood. Other pieces have a more mechanical, industrial character, like ‘Whiteout’. One of my favourites is ‘Laid bare beneath the stars’, a mysterious soundscape with hazy voices in a stormy night. Fort an ambient album “Barren Land” has quite some variation, listen for example to the guitar-based ‘Just another cold spring’.
An album with a desolate mood at times, making you feel small amidst an impressive landscape. “Barren Land” is one of the best ambient albums that came out in 2004. Recommended to fans of labels like Cold Meat and Cyclic Law.
- Funprox.com

I was amazed by the Northaunt’s first release…’The Omnious Silence’. Even reproaches that Nacht from Aghast was not helping to record this album and that it was only commercial trick doesn’t really care me much at all. ‘The Barren Land’ has also seduced me from the early beginning… I love the piano and guitar that are making Northaunt’s music so specific and beautiful. My favourite track ‘Laid Bare Beneath the Stars’ much reminds me the previous full-length cd, just listen how dark and cold it is. Music of Northaunt is strongly connected with nature, they are making landscapes from sound, and sounds from landscapes If you want to know how the gloom sounds in Norway like, this is just for you. Simply great norse dark ambient / atmospherics…You can’t let it go through.
- Martwy Zmierzch