lussuria: three knocks

Definitive Hospital Productions artist Jim Mroz, aka Lussuria, follows duties on Prurient's Rainbow Mirror LP and an appearance on Vatican Shadow's Berghain 09 mix/compilation  with a new opus worthy of comparison to his dank ambient classics, American Babylon (2012) and Industriale Illuminato. In the foreboding Three Knocks, Lussuria limns an unconscious, near-death experience based on a tale told by his mother, who was admitted to ER after an allergic reaction escalated into something inexplicable. She was put in a medically-induced coma and administered a breathing tube. When under the effect of heavy sedatives, she spoke of a visit by angels who warned of an impending disaster. She eventually came around, and recounted that her illness was preceded by three knocks at her office door, slow and heavy -- proposing that each knock was a mockery of the Holy Trinity; one knock for each crucifixion -- but when she answered nobody was there. This omen, and its confirmatory hallucination form the basis of Lussuria's utterly absorbing new album. Using a Hawaiian flute made from a human femur, and an iron lung for percussion (don't ask how he accessed it), together with operatic tape cut-ups and field recording made on the shores of Long Island's empty asylums, Lussuria stages his mother's vision in four parts of lugubrious, black metal ambient gloom. The atmosphere is just frighteningly tangible, revealing a sense of depth perception and stone cold clamminess that brings its spirit vividly within touching distance, from the over-the-shoulder vocals and cracked window pane howl of "Fentanyl Chaser", to the hollow clank of oil drums and spent ammo casings in "Three Knocks", and through to the frankly terrifying descent thru choral loops into a bony flute solo with "Confused And Ill By Shadows". This would all just be another urban myth were it not for the exquisite detail and dramaturgy of Lussuria's production and arrangement, which typically imparts its feeling in no uncertain terms, most acutely hyperstizing (making a superstition real) a state of psychological dread and panic induced by the occult imagination. Mixed and mastered by Josh Eustis. Vinyl cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. First copies on silver vinyl.