KLINIK – Akhet

We were all surprised by previous Klinik album. Being solo project of Marc Verhaegen, he was to blame. If techno/trance/psytrance experiments were received by you as sacrilege of the cult-band’s sound, wait till you hear “Akhet”! Or better - don’t. Hear, not wait.

More than two hours of soundscapes (supposed to be) inspired by Ancient Egypt’s mythology. Correct meaning of word ‘akhet’ is still elusive to today’s egyptologists, and believe me, this album will be even more puzzling to few musical enthusiasts that will have patience to analyze it.
Opening track ‘Heka’ is thirty minutes long, out of which first half is endlessly repeating combination of sounds that I perceived as presentation of waves or winds or sandstorm. Or something like. Regardless of your association, it still is far too long. Next fifteen minutes bring some ‘action’, but by that time I was too tired to notice…
’Bellatrix’ came as a salvation. Soft theme nicely blended with athmospheric and onomatopoeic sounds gave hope that all this is not for nothing. And it is only nine minutes long! Bliss! But alas! ‘Mintaka’ continued what ‘ Heka’ started – boredom. Or more precisely, feeling of weariness produced by boredom. Every concept is far-stretched to transparency. By the time you hear something interesting, you’ve already lost interest. Good combination of sounds doesn’t help, perfect layering also when every bar is repeating over and over again. If I had used a substance that gives perception of slowed-down time ( half a speed) and then listened to this disc, might be that I would have liked “Akhet”. The last song ‘Saiph’ is really good, and overall composition is superb, but it takes simply too damn long to develop. At the end of the disc I grasped the initial idea and felt something is there but I was too tired to listen to it again. So I waited…

Tried disc 2 then – only one composition, ‘Orion’, sixty minutes. Tried once, regretted it, since it was a distorted copy of ‘Heka’. Back to disc 1… but not just yet…please…

Played it again with the same after effect. This disc is not for me, I don’t have DJing equipment to speed this album up. And no substances either. This album was made for The Great Sphynx to listen, she’s patient enough. So what did I do? I stopped listening to it. And somehow I felt alive again.
Please Hands Records, make a remix of this album that is, let’s say… 50 minutes long, you will have a good release. Like this, it is simply too long, too strong, too ambient. Like many other unsuccessful ambient albums.