Black Zone Magick Chant - Voyage Sacrifice (2019)

The latest liminal low-end odyssey from French shape-shifter Maxime Primault’s BZMC entity swaps the screwed alien dancehall of past outings in favor of miasmic subterranean ritual, with compelling results. Born of “a few very intense sessions, in altered states of consciousness,” the three sprawling compositions comprising Voyage Sacrifice ooze in slow, smoke-choked darkness, awash with dungeon groans, insectoid noise, reverbed bells, molten bass, and distant demonic mumblings. Primault speaks of recent creative strategies attempting to “delete time, or escape time,” at which these pieces certainly succeed, entrancing the listener in their spiral sinkhole infinity: beatless, lightless, limitless.

Occasionally a rusted, lurching metronome emerges, infusing a drugged sense of forward motion, but the essence of Voyage Sacrifice is textural and tantric – “almost like some kind of prayer.” Chants are chanted; the zone is black. The specter of dub still looms in the disorienting fog of FX and negative space but ultimately these sides exist outside (and deep beneath) any recognizable sonic lineage. This is cultic, questing music, deprivation chamber hallucinations “beyond good and evil, beyond sense and non-sense.”

This Rorschach enigma dimension is foundational, as Primault admits: “It’s a mental journey. I handled the sacrifice; the voyage is yours.”