high aura'd: sanguine futures

Sanguine Futures opens with a slow crawl ; the burden of winter crawling across your back, reaching around your throat, grayed hands with frayed nails grip tight and pull you into an isolated realm of blissful purgatory. You're only 2 and a half minutes in and creatures are crawling out of shadows and your breath is hanging heavy. John Kolodij has crafted an auditory trip into territories that feel untouched, unmoved by a human hand, packed with ethereal and earthly blackness; a deep and dense wood, a coal-black night, tarry centers where you find the solitude of 100 year old weeping willows. This is not an album crafted to simply listen and reflect, this is heavy slabs of flesh and blood, moaning, bending, warbling to life, groaning out and sucking you in. Shades of Scelsi and Penderecki collage and wind into spacious suites, built atop a foundation of heavy Köner-styled concrete. It's beautiful, but there's a lingering fear of the unknown, and you could lose your leg at your next step. It's breathtaking and beautiful, but you're always careful not to trip too far into these skeletal treescapes.