When it comes to ambient, it's nice to have a thick, meaty release. Something you can sink your teeth into for hours to savor the rare blood flavor dripping down your throat. Wilt is a band that's been in the scene for about fifteen years or so. They have a tendency of putting together dense, atmospheric guitar and keyboard work with a variety of effects that loom in the background, the usual. But, they do it in an unusually good way. In celebration of their ten plus years of creating the best music for our worst funerals, Wilt put out Cemetery Road/Dead Electroniks, a two-disc set that features a new album and a set of remixes of older material from various colleagues.
Cemetery Road pretty much sums up everything you're going to get out of it. This does in fact provide the perfect backdrop for a walk in a cemetery. Seriously, I tried it. Songs like 'Escape', for example, feature eerie, plucked-with-raven-feathers guitars, droning wind-like sweeps keeping a strange form of continuity, and occasional wisps of ghostly moans. This stuff has some beautifully rendered keyboards. Often quite minimal, but minimal in a carefully-structured way. This stuff drones, this stuff even provides what Locrian fanboys will find shocking; real, dark, authentic music. Cemetery Road sets itself up with 'Red Bird, Black Sky', a fitting little number that sets up an image of standing at a funeral on a cloudy day, before it ends and you leave to wander the rest of the graves. As you meander around, you're lead from eerie keyboard movements to two-note, repetitive mantras, slowly trudging until you finish it off with 'To an End', walking away under a light rain, thinking about the timelessness of the earth and the lameness of life. That's the kind of thinking this sort of album forces upon you.
Dead Electroniks fills out the set rather nicely, but it probably wasn't necessary. As stated, it's a set of remixes of older Wilt songs. Some of the bands are veterans, and you also have a newer acts that have been playing around a little while, like Climax Denial. Really, if you didn't know this was a set of remixes, you'd probably think it was Wilt simply dishing out another set. They all tend to follow the same format as Cemetery Road, so there's no need to go into any great detail. If ambient is your thing, you'll pretty much be satiated by the end of the first CD, but in case you want to burst at the seams, then by all means listen to the second. It's welcome to see something you can come back to later, something that takes some time to get a feel for, but it might be a bit much for casual ambient fans. The first CD was totally enough. Locrian pretty much manages to fuck up their track, but hey, it's Locrian. Sadly, it is admittedly better than anything original they've done.
Anyway, you can't deny it, Cemetery Road/Dead Electroniks is a hungry man's feast. This is probably enough ambient/drone to chew on for an entire decade. It's a pleasant, well depressingly pleasant, meditative listen, and the inclusion of generally defined remix tracks provides fans with a ton of additional material to savor. If you've followed Wilt for the past ten years, well, it's more like the remixes will mean something to you. For the price alone you can't beat it, but don't even take a step towards it if this sort of music isn't your thing, because it's guaranteed you're going to be overwhelmed.
Written by Arkus
Link here: http://www.deafsparrow.com/wilt-review-2011.html
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