Cover by Terrance McLarnan
Style: experimental ambient, industrial, neofolk (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Bohren & der Club of Gore, Chelsea Wolfe, ROME
Country: United States-CA
Release date: 11 October 2024
Half of your favorite musicians have very different music taste than you’d be led to believe from their day-to-day project (check out any of the hundreds of Amoeba What’s in My Bag episodes if you’re a nonbeliever of my claim, but a highlight for a metalhead is Travis Ryan of Cattle Decapitation showing off his love of old Turkish pop). Leila Abdul-Rauf is likely a familiar name to the death metal-minded of you as the guitarist of Vastum, yet her solo work has eschewed metal completely, opting for a surreal take on ambient soundscapes. I quite liked the spooky aura of her 2021 album Phantasiai and its modulated trumpet (yes, that was one of the main instruments creating the soundscape), but on Abdul-Rauf’s fifth solo release, she changed her process substantially.
After a taxing past couple years of being alive for everybody (tune into the news if you’re confused and good morning from your coma), Abdul-Rauf felt a call to compose more thoroughly on Calls from a Seething Edge, and while the dreamy ambient haze remains, Calls has a cinematic rhythmicity new to her music. To achieve this more anxious, urgent sound, she utilizes folk and industrial elements to strike through the always lurking ambience. No longer content to haunt from the atmosphere, Leila Abdul-Rauf uses Calls from a Seething Edge to slowly—but actively—choke the listener. This all works to dramatic effect, the juxtapositions between more beautiful, Medieval-tinged folk (“Mukhalafat,” “Failure to Fire”) and heavier Chelsea Wolfe industrial sections (“Summon,” “Crimes of the Soul”) is jarring and gripping. For an album this slow and with such little distortion, Calls is able to conjure a foreboding heft that only the upper echelon of dark ambient artists achieve.
Abdul-Rauf also enlists the help of several collaborators to see her vision come to life, and their contributions keep Calls varied and interesting. Gregory Hagan’s eerie violin, the beautiful acoustic guitar passage of Derrick Vela (Tomb Mold, Dream Unending), and the hand percussion of Sam Foster are highlights. Yet it is partly the ambition to include such talented guests which weighs Calls from a Seething Edge down. There’s appealing variety and creative layering, but the album—and even many songs—comes across as largely disjointed. The opener “Summon,” for instance, starts with layered trumpets and synth atmospheres and then transitions into a dissonant choral arrangement like Lingua Ignota before switching to the viola and acoustic guitar to end. Everything on its own is an interesting enough idea to pursue, but they don’t feel fleshed out nor cohesive.
Perhaps more frustrating is Abdul-Rauf’s emphasis on vocal arrangements this time around. The first dissonant choral part on the album was intriguing because it was novel, but each instance after became increasingly tiring, and by the end I was sick of them. She leans into a droning quality of her voice, and the whole shebang becomes repetitive, and it even takes away from some of the instrumental variety. I even prefer the whispered delivery on “Mukhalafat,” and I get immediately distracted from the lovely Bohren & der Club of Gore-informed jazz of “The Light That Left You” as soon as the sultry, slightly dissonant vocal delivery starts.
This is certainly impressive ambient/folk/industrial from a primarily metal artist, and I can tell Abdul-Rauf loves it and has great passion for her craft, but Calls from a Seething Edge is an album weakened by its own ambition. The call to compose during a worldwide time of strife is honorable, but I think the disconnected dreamscapes of Abdul-Rauf’s prior works are a more fitting soundtrack to dystopia.
Recommended tracks: Mukhalafat, Failure to Fire, Crimes of the Soul
You may also like: Galya Bisengalieva, Murcof, The Lovecraft Sextet, Pan Daijing
Final verdict: 6/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram
Label: independent
Leila Abdul Rauf is:
Leila Abdul Rauf – most stuff
Gregory C. Hagan – viola on tracks 1, 4 and 7
Sam Foster – percussion, additional drum sampling on tracks 1, 2 and 6
Derrick Vella – acoustic guitar on tracks 1 and 7
Vincent van Veen – electric cello, electric upright bass on tracks 3 and 4
Ryan Honaker – violin on track 4
Ed Lloyd Grey – acoustic upright bass on track 5
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