This is a collaborative effort between three experimental noise units that offers up a variety of sounds (for obvious reasons) to varying degrees of success. Starter "Point of No Return" is by far the shortest track at four minutes. It's also relatively quiet, relying mainly on throbbing hums, subtle crackling distortion (panned), strange gurgling noises, and some cold moaning tones that create an odd sense of melody, etc. "Rectangle" opens with piercing feedback with some eerie ringing tones in the midrange, gradually caving in to weird "vocals" (I think?) that are layered - sort of similar to the moaning of the first track but very cheesy and disruptive to the song's atmosphere. Things then continue with a slightly more toned down manifestation of those vocals alongside chiming bells and such before some excellent distorted textures cut in briefly. The bulk of "Triangle" is in the vein of traditional harsh noise, perhaps "atmospheric harsh noise" due to the way the distortion is kept in check, but I enjoy it. The mood is nice, the flow is suitable, and the piece has a more cohesive approach than most of the others, using shifts in volume to provide some sense of variation without going too far from the intention of the piece - though there is one brief break using some lush stringed instruments, which, while a bit unexpected, does work out well. (The clear sample at the end of track seems somewhat out of place, but I can live with it.) The 20-minute "Line" starts out almost inaudibly quiet, building slowly into a minimal composition with slowly rising and falling hums/feedback tones that are layered almost like a harmony, but they sort of wear on your ears after awhile for sure. "Chanting" vocals come in towards the latter minutes, but as a whole this track is a complete waste - it's very boring, drags on for far too long, and really just sounds a like simple experiment that doesn't properly represent any of the contributors' talents. "Point" is sort of like a combination of "Point of No Return" and "Triangle", fusing sheer ambience and straightforward harsh noise relatively successfully, sans the continually annoying presence of the strange vocal manipulations (which are thankfully kept to a fair minimum in this composition). The sound quality is very nice, dense but clear, with clarity and a dense mix that keeps everything close together without sounding either muddy or thin. I don't have any complaints there. The packaging is simple, yet tastefully effective, with one icon to represent each contributing artist, clean text, and geometric figures/diagrams printed with black and metallic gold ink on matte textured blue paper. The disc is housed in a sleeve with a foldover flap, so things are compact and minimal. All in all this is a nice looking, nice sounding disc with some great tracks on it, but there's also a lot of filler, and I feel like the three participants could have done better with over an hour's worth of music, so... not bad, but it has room for improvement.
[Topheth Prophet]
Running time - 62:30, Tracks: 5
[Notable tracks: Triangle, Point]
Topheth Prophet - http://www.njstudio.co.il/tp/
