Baron Elmo proudly presents an ultraviolet-dark LP of scary ambient soundscapery from Belgian sound alchemist Pepijn Caudron, aka KRENG: L'Autopsie Phenomenale De Dieu, a Norwegian import released in 2009 by the Miasmah label in an edition of 500 copies, now out of print in all formats. An assemblage of music for different theatre productions, L'Autopsie Phenomenale holds up amazingly well as a single aesthetic statement, perhaps because Caudron works with such singularity of purpose. This is some of the grimmest instrumental music you will ever hear, the perfect score to your deepest, darkest fears. (The Pitchfork review below sums up this album's bleak power very effectively.) Here's how Kreng's label describes the proceedings: Discordant segments of wailing top-end violins give way to clunking rhythmic passages of metal marimbas and tuned percussion; free roaming passages of rasping low-end brass and the shuffle of free jazz. recalling the work of Prestige-era Moondog, as well as aspects of Harry Partch's instrumentation via mid- to latterday period Tom Waits, are all at work here. Atonal ambiance and slow builds, eerie segues into low murk, and a haunting solo soprano voice are all pulled together to make perfect sense, often in terrifying ways. The creative process in Kreng's twisted soundscapes works perhaps in parallel with the abstract and often disturbing work of the Abattoir Fermé theatre company, which has used many of the scores found here in a variety of their productions. In this context, the dark and threatening moods the album creates suggest it may house more subversive, ritualistic, even occult undertones; Kreng's music is based upon the possibility of silence as a confrontational weapon. Wouldn't you gladly pay to hear something like that? The record is pressed on beautiful clear green vinyl. L'Autopsie Phenomenale De Dieu was a limited edition of 500 that sold out immediately on LP, and the CD version is currently out of print as well. Both the record and the cover are in pristine, near-mint shape.

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Track listing
Na De Sex     
Tinseltown     
In De Berm – Part 3     
Caliban     
Nerveuze Man     
Meisje In Auto (Naar Prelude No. 20 In C Minor Van F. Chopin)     
Mythobarbital     
Nimmermeer     
De Storm     
The Black Balloon & The Armadillo (Edit)     
Merope 

*****

Over the past few years, the small Norwegian label Miasmah Records has been heroically doing its part to make the world a slightly darker, lonelier place with a steady stream of majestically bleak ambient classical releases, some inspired by the frozen polar climes. Last year's Treny, by the Polish producer Michal Jacaszek, was a funereal wash of chamber strings and electronics, but it scans as harmlessly pretty next to Kreng's seriously nasty L'Autopsie Phénoménale De Dieu. The debut by the Belgian artist Pepijn Caudron, L'Autopsie is a harrowing bad trip of a record, a malevolent wisp of low drones, eerie, high whines, and disquieting found-sound samples. If that doesn't sound like quite the right soundtrack for your soul-wiltingly hot late August-- well, maybe keep it in mind for late February, when the ground is the same pallid color as the sky. You'll need this sort of thing then.

"Na De Sex" opens the proceedings on a deceptively peaceful note, a piano tumbling its way down the only major scale you will hear for the rest of the album. Then, an ominous tritone-- bowed on one violin and plucked on another-- intrudes, and from that point forward, the lights shut off completely. Except for a mournful little gypsy violin figure that pops up briefly on "Caliban," L'Autopsie dispenses completely with Treny's weeping string arrangements. The sonic landscape here is arid, even desolate: a single violin whispers a high harmonic; a muted trumpet bleats feebly; a brushed snare rasps like sandpaper. The instruments are separated by yawning caverns of blank space, and the effect is not dissimilar to a Webern miniature, where the silences grow so immense that you begin to be aware of your own heartbeat.

To raise hackles higher, Caudron scatters a mix of deeply disturbing sound samples throughout, ranging from muffled screams and dialogue sampled from old horror movies ("Why don't you turn back into a cat?" a man inquires at one point. "I liked you better that way") to rodent-like squeaking noises, to-- most upsetting of all-- the sound of a young woman sobbing quietly while Chopin's mournful Prelude No. 20 in C minor plays in the foreground. On "Slaapliedje", children whisper horrible, ghostly sounds into your ear. Wobbly old recordings of opera sopranos spin in a back room somewhere, furthering the creep factor.

With such a haunted-house ambience, it takes awhile before you notice that Caudron actually uses a wide range of instrumentation on L'Autopsie, including cello, bassoon, and accordion. He seems to operate on the principle, however, that if the instrument can't be shrunk down teeny-tiny and made to emulate a creaking door, then it goes out the window. There are some glowing piano passages that recall Satie, and some vaguely tribal bangs and clonks in the percussion that summon the spirit of Harry Partch, but mostly, L'Autopsie belongs to its own genre, ready-made to soundtrack upcoming David Lynch films or avant-garde theater productions (not coincidentally, the surrealist theater troupe Abbatoir Fermé has used Kreng's music for some of its productions). Hovering like a unshakeable doubt or a 3 a.m. bout of existential dread, L'Autopsie is brilliantly sinister mood music; put it on in the background and it will surely make whatever task you are engaged in at least 30% more evil.

~ Jayson Greene, Pitchfork