From its very first sound, Richard A. Ingram's Consolamentum sounds like a nightmare. Hopefully you appreciate these grim environs, because Consolamentum seldom leaves them. Electro-acoustic terror is not what you'd expect from the solo debut of the guitarist for Oceansize, a band who formed in the 1990s and pretty much stayed there. But Ingram cracks his skull open and finds a lot more than post-rock noodles and grunge riffs crawling around inside.
The sound will be familiar to anyone who's swept out the darker corners of metal-influenced drone: broken-backed dirges for guitar, piano, and mutilated tape that skulk between ambient, noise, and pure sound art. The melodic elements are strong but always imperiled in corrosive atmospheres. The emphasis is on texture and weight, with big sounds that are full of air and small ones that sink like lead, woven into coarse yet involved patterns. One of the best tracks, "De Montfort", works drones and Satie-inspired piano into an uneven pile of looped scratches and clatters. There is a uniform sense of coiled menace, but the compositions are diverse.
You don't need the titular reference to an archaic religious sect to clue you in that this is an esoteric album. In fact, the title adds an unnecessary extra layer of opacity that threatens to obscure what you really listen for in music like this: the spark of a unique personality. Luckily, Ingram has that. Like his many of his peers, the emotional center of his music is arrested dread. But he breaks the mold by allowing for small, vital moments of catharsis-- unbroken chains of guitar notes welling up from the benighted margins. This is a productive change of pace for a style that often stops at "something terrible is coming." Ingram's monsters, on occasion, actually arrive-- and they're beautiful.
