Veil of Light is back with his first release since the majestically morose Ξ album of last year (now sold out). The new 12″ EP contains a quartet of songs that capture the artist’s signature air of serene and complex industrial melancholy, yet widens the spectrum to include glimpses of, dare I say, joy and hope. All the more powerful, then, the main theme of dead serious exploration of the emotional torso, its appendages and circulatory system. The title, Head/Blood/Chest, inevitably brings to mind the seminal Throbbing Gristle album Journey Through a Body. But the kinship ends there. This is no experimental 1/2-inch tape cacophony. This is beautiful and evocative music, redolent with wonder. The bleak, yet confident, tone echoes like the early literary works of James Graham Ballard, particularly The Drowned World (1963). The ever-heating climate is going to sizzle the poles and submerge all major cities on Earth. We will return to the humid, reptilian lagoon from out of which we once evolved. As with Ballard, the lasting impression from Head/Blood/Chest is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, this is a good thing. A long overdue return to our archaeopsychic past.
Head/Blood/Chest is a journey through an emotional as well as visceral landscape, that arrives at the conclusion that the two seemingly dualistic properties are, perhaps, made of the same basic stuff. A hauntingly atmospheric and heart-swelling dreamscape, magnetically etched into twelve inches of black vinyl.
