Music For Unknown Rituals vinyl

Another exceptional double album deep dive from Umor Rex mainstays Andreas Gerth and Carl Oesterhelt, respectively one-half of Driftmachine, and the artist who debuted with the landmark 11 Pieces for Synthesizer album. As ever, trying to summon adjectives to correctly describe what's here isn't easy, but let's give it a go anyway. Mysterious, dark, haunting, but also ultimately very beautiful - albeit often in a slightly chilling way - it's highly rhythmic patient stuff. A fitting title, it's hard not to picture tribalism, gatherings, premeditated practices and timeless traditions when becoming absorbed by the hypnotic contents here. It's transportive stuff, both in terms of time and place, era and style, a sense of loops and cycles being the real omnipresent thread here. Earthen ambient, strange factory floor downtempo, cinematic synths and more. The kind of record that's only possible when two people haul themselves up in a remote village with an abundance of instruments and see what happens.