Review Summary: I would be surprised if Dark Path wasn’t regarded as the benchmark for top-quality neofolk, and if Chet Scott wasn’t known as anything but the king of this genre.
The Elemental Chrysalis is yet another of Chet Scott’s ambitiously interesting and unique Glass Throat Recordings-produced projects. Like Ruhr Hunter and Blood of the Black Owl, it brings its own interesting elements to the table and has distinctive offerings with a definitive flavor of his style throughout. Though they released an album in 2005, The Dark Path to Spiritual Expansion is a much fuller, more polished piece and is definitely the primary output of the band thus far.
Coming on two CDs and adding up to a massive 118-minute run time, it’s a serious venture and sitting down to make it through both discs in a single listen is a daunting task – but the music is best enjoyed that way. It swivels back and forth between the organic sounds of simple plucked guitar rhythms and resonating, ethereal, electronic manipulations of natural sounds, all while keeping minimalistic about how much it presents the listener with at any given time. It avoids overloading with layered, competing rhythms, but rather builds complimenting sounds on top of one another to mold a single, rich melody.
The guitar riffs are modernized and folksy, the kind of things that might have come off of a late-career Johnny Cash record or Steve Von Till’s solo material. They’re stylish and easy to appreciate and they don’t delve into very much of the ‘foreignness’ often found in the more experimental regions of Chet Scott’s musical world. The riffs often go on for a long time (with only two of the tracks on the album under ten minutes and two of them over twenty), but they evolve; Chet and James find a way to keep them interesting, to make subtle changes, and to fluctuate the background music and drop out with the strings for long enough where, despite the epic length of it all, things never really have a chance to feel very boring or repetitious.
Vocals are sparse, but when they do come on, they always bring something fantastically interesting to the mix, never feeling unnecessary and staying clear of interrupting the flow of the music. In ‘Hehaka’, they fit immaculately well. The album hitherto having gone without any real vocal contribution, it suddenly introduces the human voice as a leading aspect of the track – and they blend in perfectly, really showing the mastery that Chet Scott has over the production of his music. Hearing so many diverse noises, both very electronic and entirely organic, together with vocals in a smooth, clean, minimalist style is refreshing in a genre where music so often leans towards dullness on longer tracks.
‘Our Limbs Your Shelter… Our Roots Your Den’ interrupts the vocal flow of the other songs for something more hissed and violent sounding, bizarrely reminiscent of Devil Doll’s Mr. Doctor. At times, the sound becomes very dense and immersive, the thick electronic backing noise seemingly designed for surround sound performance, but it always manages to stray far from becoming overwhelming, taking each step in the musical progression one at a time.
Natural sounds, recordings of rainfall and rolling thunder orchestrate atop the unending notes of bone horns and flutes that occasionally give way to intoxicatingly strange singing far in the distance. Shrill, almost inhuman cries, and the slowly rising beat of a drum introduce the album’s longest track. Clocking in at nearly a half an hour, it manages to remain interesting and hold the listener’s attention for the entire span, mainly thanks to the incredibly smooth build-up of the mix and their willingness to combine various rhythms under a single song title.
The album concludes softly and calmly, requesting only that one sits back and takes it all in, refreshing and gentle following the loudest points on the record. It’s potent, and it’s difficult not to walk away from it wishing that The Elemental Chrysalis had done something more since its release in 2007. It has a way of making other neofolk albums seem hollow. Chet Scott’s absolute mastery over the production of the music and the obvious deep understanding these two artists have of the instruments they’re using are constantly evident. The album flourishes because of details, because of the little things that differentiate between what makes music work and what prevents it from working.
The Dark Path to Spiritual Expansion is the Lord of the Rings to neofolk’s fantasy genre. Sure there are some other great albums out there for you to enjoy, and many of them have their own perks and their own interesting elements, but The Elemental Chrysalis manages to double the length of nearly all of them and set what should be the industry standard for every form of quality. While it’s not perfect, anything bothersome can be forgiven by the simple fact that it’s one step closer to perfection than anything else available in the genre right now.
I would be surprised if Dark Path wasn’t regarded as the benchmark for top-quality neofolk, and if Chet Scott wasn’t known as anything but the king of this genre. 4/5.
