A new review of “The Innermost Legacy” was recently published by Frans de Waard on Vital Weekly:
(…) St.an.da. is a new branch to the mighty tree that is Italy’s Silentes label. Another is their Silentes Minimal Editions, who re-release a double CD by Amon, in cooperation with Eibon Records. The latter originally released this in 1999. Behind Amon is Andrea Marutti, who seems to be less active these days. A decade or so ago he seemed much more active when it came to releasing music, either under his name, but also as Afeman, Lips Vago, Never Known and Spiral. As Amon, he was most active from 1996 to 2008. Originally “The Innermost Legacy” was a single CD; the second CD contains “a selection of previously unreleased tracks recorded at various Amon concerts during the late ’90s”. If Orsi’s latest album is ‘slightly darker’, then this is sure ‘very dark’. It is the kind of dark ambient that one heard quite a bit in the 90s, when for music like this, someone invented the term ‘isolationist’ music, a term to describe a broad range for more experimental forms of ambient music, usually made by individuals in home studios. It is not a term I use a lot these days, but just now I am thinking about it and it occurred to me that it is also a term that one could apply to music that has a very claustrophobic feeling. That is something that the music of Amon has in abundance. The sound of being locked in a small room and an escape is not imminent. You hear sounds outside, but very much also inside your head and you could easily think you’re going crazy. It is interesting to compare the studio music and live recordings from those years and note that the studio recordings have a level of abstraction that I didn’t find in the concert material. It’s not that these are easier going, as here too everything is pitched down quite a bit and a bit of distortion is not avoided, but as far as live music from the dark underbelly of the universe this is something that at a medium-high volume will be quite overwhelming. At the same volume, the studio recordings would come to mild torture, with that more than a mild distortion of all sonic frequencies. It is all quite overwhelming but on a rain-soaked Thursday afternoon, this is the perfect soundtrack; it all stays very grey!