Influenced by survival-horror video games and the National Geographic, the multi-faceted David Reed of Reed Heavy Industries has been serving up generous doses of brooding dark ambience under various guises for a good nine years now. Having worked on solo projects in the past including Brittle and Luasa Raelon, Reed finally shares with us another release under the name Envenomist - and with it again proves an uncanny synth-fuelled ability to conjure up imagery that bleeds a perceptible sense of darkness and loss.

The Helix surfaces on Killerpimp Records two mysterious years after recording.  Unsettling yet meditative, lonely and insular, this CD is well produced, with chillingly close attention to detail. More starkly minimalist than his other projects, and strongly influenced by artists such as Maurizio Bianchi and Klaus Schulze, there would be no surprise if this was used for a sci-fi or horror movie soundtrack. Hypnotising and intense, Reed's intention across all his recording aliases was to create music that demands some kind of story line. This time, The Helix is intended to offer a window into the mind of a lone space-traveller.

Perhaps the most variable and emotive of them all, "The 11th Hour" lures the listener into a dark and doom-laden world of hopelessness, where man and machine are completely alone. Lagging and shearing synth tones provide a hefty portion of near-palpable tension, forming a firm foothold from which to explore this emotionally poisonous environment. 

Any sense of structure or security gained from the opening tracks is shattered into fragments with a cruel antipathy in what is the pivotal track, "Final Frontier". Glacial and horrendous, the irregularly shimmering tones of a cosmic wind-chime pervade this piece, creating a crushing sense of discomfort in the most emotionally difficult piece of them all. Having created a potentially neurosis-inducing sense of distress and agitation, this could be his strongest track for its effectiveness alone.

Offering some sort of escape, "Gyres" provides small comfort with its closely humming static buzz that slowly drones on, and on, and on. "Bestowal", though more colourful - or as colourful as a picture of cosmic emptiness can be - is not much more than a brighter extension of "Gyres" and fails to provide much satisfaction as the closing track. One suspects that this anti-climax could be the artist's intention, due to the generally uncomfortable theme of the album, but it is probably not deliberate.

Somewhere, surely, there must be individuals out there who love to expose themselves to such great lashings of darkness - people who love to wallow in carefully crafted sonic displays of dire emptiness and gloom. For those that do, though definitely not groundbreaking, this recording will come as a (un)pleasant surprise. For those that don't, Reed has no doubt achieved his intent and has succeeded in making this world a darker, more troubled place.

-Christa Macnaughton