Midnight tones lurk around the corners of Bound By An Endless Desire To Wander Down Avenues Of Apathy. The plummeting light slips away, giving way to the witching hour. At this time of night, the pitch-black street becomes a no-go zone. You should probably avoid this place. The cold, sterile temperature gives your presence away. White clouds are seen with every passing breath. A dull, thumping and far away rhythm is barely audible, but still it walks closer and closer. A garbled, tinny voice juts out of loudspeakers disguised as faulty streetlights. For a couple of seconds, you hear the shrill clank of metal grinding against a concrete pavement. It isn’t Silent Hill – it’s a place much closer to home.
Misty and impenetrable, the music of Be My Friend In Exile hangs in the air like a black cloud. The ink-stained notes would block out the Sun if it were not already illuminating the other side of the planet, the planet itself a tiny orb alone and abandoned in the black web of space. Exiled. Soft notes begin to play in reverse, and louder, more substantial notes work their way into the music, almost eclipsing the others. This is dark, psychological ambient – suggestive of something you can’t see, of feared recesses faked and fabricated by the mind. Do you remember The Blair Witch Project? If you can’t see it, it’s all the more frightening (or, at the very least, pretty unsettling.) This is haunted music, because you can always feel another presence nearby. Shrouded in taught, black robes coated by centuries of dust, it hangs its hood over the music, putting pressure on it, oppressing it, suffocating it as it restricts the flow of air.
The tones are consistently low, dark harbingers that prepare the way. It doesn’t ever become depressing or overly sinister (a lot of the time, the artist will try too hard to be overly sinister, and this has the complete opposite effect, coming across instead as a laughable cliche). Not here, though. There’s an intensity to the music. Like an old wooden door, the tones creak with rusty bones and decrepit frames. Gloomy guitar textures prefer to stay in the shadows. Cobwebs are strewn across the six strings, and they rock out slowly. Lightly distorted, lightly echoing, the crypt, locked for centuries, sings its incredibly dusty chorus. For the final sixteen minutes, a mist – or a spirit – rises up to street level. This is the symphony of the night. In the light of a new day, mysteries disintegrate. The police suspected foul play, because upon entry, the tomb was empty and slightly ajar. (James Catchpole)
a closer listen 