Stars Without Light - Beneath And Before (2023)

The inaugural offering from composer and dark ambient veteran Harlow MacFarlane (Funerary Call, Sistrenatus, Havan...)’s mysterious, unheard of Stars Without Light provides the score to a yet-to-be discovered, disintegrating film reel of the unknowable. With masterful curation of sound and catharsis, this shadowy entity coaxes the aural observer into a spectral Otherscape. Over the course of the disquieting “Beneath and Before”, we attempt to follow this captivating sonic narrative through an ever-shifting apocalyptic landscape, waiting, hiding behind a thin veil of synthetic scrapings, rhythmic grinding, and hissing surface noise, lest we are discovered by what dwells beyond.

The churn of electronic howls, twitching clatter, and all-out scrap metal assault submerges beneath contrapuntal found sounds and manipulated past echoes, selectively relieved by an occasional eerie calm. An unexplainable agoraphobia begins to take hold within this ebb and flow. With just enough analog textures, decaying tape loops, and perceptible instrumentation to fleetingly ground the listener back to tangible reality, we are cruelly reset for the next bout of formless fear. Unexpected thundering percussion and suffocating sub-abyssal rumblings provide momentary stabs of angular rhythm that tear through the apparitional atmosphere. But, only to hold your attention long enough so as to not lose you completely in the tension swarm.

We cannot help but follow the pull of this entrancing and expertly wrought collage of cacophony. MacFarlane has orchestrated a viscerally affecting hauntology reminiscent of no real place and no real time. As breathtakingly dynamic as it is surreally cinematic, we are left with the soundtrack to a film that should not be.