Hemy/Rowell

What Lies Below, the debut album by ambient/drone duo Hemy/Rowell, takes the listener on a sonic journey into the darkness.

We begin our descent with "Burning Ghost" the album's opener. It begins with a quiet guitar riff before exploding with sound. Slow, distorted guitars, high pitched beeps, and many other subtle noises set the tone of the album. This flows right into "Dead Setting." As the title suggests, the song evokes images of a vacant area of some sort. A low hum sits throughout the track, while some guitar floats above in a slow, dreamlike manner. This is one of the more ambient songs on the album, less about variety and more about setting a mood, which it does well.

This is followed by the 12 minute epic, "Addiction." A gong-like noise is heard in the background, repeating slowly. Above this are some unsettling scratching noises, which grow more intense as the song rolls on. My mind floats to a man sitting at his boring office job, growing more and more impatient as he waits for a chance to get his fix. The scratching, gnawing sensation continues to grow before finally he is compensated for his waiting. At this point the song kicks into a low, growling doom-metal breakdown. Frantic, but calming. All the layers have been stripped away, and the listener can melt away into bliss.

The low hum of the guitar is quickly contrasted by the following track, "Shimmer," in which all bass is removed in exchange with high pitched glass-like sounds backed by a drawling guitar solo. "What Lies Below," the album's title track, brings us back to the beeps and boops of "Burning Ghost," this time going deeper into the ghostly ocean of sound. The closing track, "Ghostly Fire" features a light guitar riff that carries the song along, being interrupted throughout by a growl of distortion. The two sounds begin to morph together as the song progresses, before cancelling eachother out and leaving us with some broken circuit-esque sounds which fade out into silence, waking us up from the dream world that Hemy/Rowell has painted over our eyes.

Overall, this is a very solid album. Hemy/Rowell seamlessly mixes styles from drone, to ambient, to electronic, and doom metal. The world they create is a dark one, but one that you will find yourself going back to again and again in order to discover What Lies Below.

Download the album for FREE here: http://www.mrsveerecordings.co.uk/audvee18/register.php

Recommended Tracks: "Burning Ghost", "Addiction"