Into a genre oversaturated by bedroom acts and laptop-twiddling ne’er-do-wells come Altair Temple, and unfortunately, their debut full-length will do little to separate them from the depressing mire that is the dark ambient subgenre. It seems this French duo’s raison d’être is to bludgeon the listener into submission with their insistent, nocturnal dirges, and halfway through their debut album, I was submitting wholeheartedly. The truly original and gifted musicians that ply their wares in the drone genre are few and far between, and based on the evidence of this self-titled release, Altair Temple seem destined to remain on the fringes, deficient in all of the qualities that the luminaries of the scene possess. They’ve crafted an album that’s an extraordinarily difficult and unsettling listen, crippled by its lack of discernible heart. Unless you're of a particularly masochistic bent, chances are you'll greet the silence that follows the collection's closing number "Antrag" with a relieved sigh.
Opener “Shruti” presents the blueprints for the following 46 minutes; dark and droning, a molasses crawl reliant on subtle motifs and loops. It's a formula that the Bordeaux pair adheres to ad infinitum, and it quickly grows tiresome. Songs become indistinguishable from the next. Of course, it's entirely probable that it is the act’s intention for individual tracks to blend into one drawn-out somnambulist blur, and to this end they certainly succeed. However, a lack of variation, ingenuity or adventurism hampers any aspirations the twosome may harbor, resulting in an bland and bleak listening experience.
“Juil” is a swirling passage of indefinable instrumental origin, less reliant on structure or progression than an incessant, gloomy bumble. “Gefe Vrita” drags its heels for all of its seven and a half minutes, as does its unpleasant follow-up “Illuminations“. Moments of clarity and calm are rare, but some shards of light finally emerge through the dense, oppressive fog on “Melodic Fairies“. Unfortunately, that particular track is an anomaly; it's immediately followed by the monolithic “Arch” and its successor “March“, both studies in stifling cacophony. The latter number is a particularly tough listen, comprised as it is of a single elongated buzz. But even this isn't the album's weakest moment. That dubious honor belongs to “Swan“, a typically aimless mess that for reasons known only to the band contains some of the most annoying screeching noises heard on a record since Lou Reed's infamous exercise in fanbase alienation, Metal Machine Music.
”Guitar and keyboard drones” is how the act's label Radar Swarm describes the album, which is pretty much Altair Temple in a nutshell: no more, no less. There is nothing groundbreaking or forward-thinking to be found here, just the kind of dull directionless dirges that have plagued drone music since Sunn 0))) first begun exploring the sonic possibilities of dissonance and amp feedback. But while Steven O'Malley's aforementioned genre figureheads and the likes of Dylan Carlson's Earth have built a figurative house of melodic suss and explorative creativity on the foundations they laid previously, Altair Temple struggle to amount to anything more than genre also-rans. This is one temple I won’t be worshipping at anytime soon.
-Peter Brennan