Ajna – Inevitable Mortality (Album – Zoharum)
Genre/Influences: Dark-Ambient, Cinematic.
Format: Digital, 2CD.
Background/Info: “Ajna” originally released this album in 2016 featuring six tracks. It was released by reverse Alignment as a strictly limited CDR format. The work has been now re-released featuring an extra disc with six more cuts originally written in the same period of the work.
Content: The original work stands for an overwhelming dark sound creating a sonic mayhem that comes immediately through. The tracks are progressively built up, often without that much variation but creating an obscure, tenebrous, vision by the listener. The 6 extra cuts are quite comparable in approach and mood but accentuated by more explicit field recordings.
+ + + : The opening part of the work still has this tremendous sensation mainly coming through at the title track and “Un Unknown Visitor”. The dark mood creates a sensation of deep, despair which is accentuated by a few, ghost-like, spoken passages. This is an album I recommend listening to by using headphones to notice the very few, but essential, sonic details joining in.
– – – : The bonus disc is a nice gift for the Ajna-addicts but doesn’t bring the best cuts.
Conclusion: It all feels like the original work hasn’t been affected by the weight of time. This is an opportunity to (re)discover a cool work by Ajna.
Best songs: “An Unknown Visitor”, “Inevitable Mortality”, “At The End” + “A Tragic Landscape II – Deeper Solitude”.
Rate: 8.
Label: www.zoharum.com / www.facebook.com/zoharum
About Ajna
Ajna is a dark ambient project from New York, active since 2008. The first proper release, “The Strange Demeanor Of Solitude”, came out in 2013 through the Petroglyph Music netlabel, followed by the first physical release, “Inevitable Mortality”, in 2016 on Reverse Alignment. Ajna later joined Cyclic Law for the 2018 album “Lucid Intrusion”.
Zoharum reissued “Inevitable Mortality” in 2023 as a 2CD edition, adding a bonus disc of six tracks written during the same period as the original recording.
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