Sylvan

Although this EP was released in April 2021, two songs on it were originally recorded in 2019 and a third song "Yearning" had been recorded in 2018 so it gives newcomers to Raat's music who might have been drawn by the Delhi-based one-man band's recent album "Raison d'Etre" a snapshot of what Raat was once upon a time though all three songs have been reworked in the dark and heavy fusion atmospheric / post-BM style of "Raison d'Etre". The title track is a powerful demonstration of where Raat is at these days, moving from softly warm and radiant acoustic-guitar melody ambience to harsh noise guitar blizzards and continuously shrieking frost-edged phantom ghost voices. The frazzly dense music and continuous wailing reminds me of an atmo-black / psychedelic US band I used to listen to (Njiqahdda) years ago before the quality of that band's releases went downhill - though Raat's blizzard has a much sharper and cutting metallic edge. The contrast between the burning guitars and the cold ambient wash in the background is huge and gives the song a vast expansive scale. Long instrumental sections make it even more epic.

The two tracks following have their work cut out to match the title track in sonic range, mood and vastness. "Cold Wind" manages to be intimate and stately at the same time as a mostly soft atmospheric piece of silver-toned guitars (electric and acoustic), gentle dream-like clean vocals and just enough hard drum-beats to give the song a gritty edge. It's a beautiful and wistful track where the darkness is never far away. "Yearning" returns to some of the earlier hardness of "Sylvan" with an emphasis on grinding guitars, sometimes pop-friendly riffs and a mix of melancholy blues immersion and a defiant attitude, full of hope and determination, facing down darkness and chaos. While this is a shorter track than the title track, there are moments in "Yearning" that could have been trimmed for repetition and length without sacrificing warm radiant music and a later triumphant mood.

The recording is good if not even, the first song outstripping the others in ambition and immersive atmosphere though "Cold Wind" is worthy in its own dreamy way. Of course, being a short work, the EP is nowhere near as ambitious, complex and majestic as the album it follows but for the same reason it offers listeners a more manageable experience of Raat's style and range.

The front cover artwork which is sure to catch a lot of MA readers' attention is an excerpt of a painting by 19th-century Polish painter Stanisław Witkiewicz whose son Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz also became a noted painter and writer in the 1920s before committing suicide in 1939 in despair at the German and Soviet invasions of Poland.