A new face in the already profound roster of Harlow MacFarlane’s (Funerary Call, Stars Without Light...) body of work, Phantom Pinnacles presents a dense Odyssey of tragic themes and long-lost moments. From the first to the last echoed fragment, Between Voices presents a fragile ambience that only exists in a reawakening memory from the forgotten corners of the mind.

Vignettes of swarming synthesizers and humbled symphonies weave into off-kilter, melancholic melodies, extracted from a magnetic void of corrupted data and analog tape. Opaque sketches splinter time and distort reality into an angular, alternate state, evoking a fruitless attempt to catch a fading dream as it slips away into the dim light. The dreamer left somber and abandoned in the hiss and flutter of voices singing and shouting from a liminal fog.

Brief reflections of a distant reality lived by unknown wraiths on reel-to-reel and video cassettes shudder into sustained drones and dissolving motifs. Shocks of familiarity reside in the otherworldly, but only until the disembodied return and resume their broken soundtrack. Their cries left resounding in the distance, still haunting the crackling texture, resurrected in shimmering tones and spectral scapes.

Within this fading allusion, Between Voices manages to stretch sound to its limits until time itself seems to come to a delicate standstill, and all is crushed in a greying and growing expanse of transcendent, forgotten music. Artwork by Paw Grabowski & Kevin Gan Yuen. Mastered by James Plotkin.

CD Edition of 300 copies in LP like format with sleeve, matt lamination. 9 Tracks. Running Time 35:06 EAN: 0679628554532

Release Date March 29 2024

• Digital Available Via Bandcamp

Visit Cyclic Law to Order

The inaugural offering from composer and dark ambient veteran Harlow MacFarlane (Funerary Call, Sistrenatus, Havan...)’s mysterious, unheard of Stars Without Light provides the score to a yet-to-be discovered, disintegrating film reel of the unknowable. With masterful curation of sound and catharsis, this shadowy entity coaxes the aural observer into a spectral Otherscape. Over the course of the disquieting “Beneath and Before”, we attempt to follow this captivating sonic narrative through an ever-shifting apocalyptic landscape, waiting, hiding behind a thin veil of synthetic scrapings, rhythmic grinding, and hissing surface noise, lest we are discovered by what dwells beyond.

The churn of electronic howls, twitching clatter, and all-out scrap metal assault submerges beneath contrapuntal found sounds and manipulated past echoes, selectively relieved by an occasional eerie calm. An unexplainable agoraphobia begins to take hold within this ebb and flow. With just enough analog textures, decaying tape loops, and perceptible instrumentation to fleetingly ground the listener back to tangible reality, we are cruelly reset for the next bout of formless fear. Unexpected thundering percussion and suffocating sub-abyssal rumblings provide momentary stabs of angular rhythm that tear through the apparitional atmosphere. But, only to hold your attention long enough so as to not lose you completely in the tension swarm.

We cannot help but follow the pull of this entrancing and expertly wrought collage of cacophony. MacFarlane has orchestrated a viscerally affecting hauntology reminiscent of no real place and no real time. As breathtakingly dynamic as it is surreally cinematic, we are left with the soundtrack to a film that should not be.

CD Edition of 300 copies in LP like format with sleeve. 9 Tracks. Running Time 35:53 EAN: 0679628554556

Release Date December 15 2023

• Digital Available Via Bandcamp

Experience Reality’s Deconstruction With SUTEKH HEXEN And FUNERARY CALL’s Black Noise Nightmare – “P:R:I:S:M” – Full Album Premiere

\

With P:R:I:S:M, magisterial sonic-alchemists Sutekh Hexen and Funerary Call join forces to deliver a fully collaborative album of 8 highly experimental tracks. Throughout this octonary journey, concepts and unseen source energies are refined into spectrums of deeper consciousness. The resulting narrative guides the listener through a vastness of (dis)charging energies, rebirth through dissolution, and harrowing harmonic passages in tremendous spaces. Inner-workings suspend transformations in time.

Pushing their respective boundaries, Sutekh Hexen and Funerary Call initiate the listener with the crystalline, static miasma of the album’s opener 'Meridian غ', only to enshroud them in the manifesting psychosis of 'Infernal Folly'. The churning mysticism of 'Perilous Shade' offers temporal sanctuary, and 'Toward the Eastern Gate' calls forth tectonic-prophecies as the album's centerpiece, tipping the scale into 'Fractal - Void'—a blistering disarmament in a storm of guitars, scathing electronics, and the disembodied calls we all anticipate and fear. 'Æscend Obsidia' tests the preceding tension and overwhelms in shimmering radiance before declaring release in 'Pangæ Ultima 2'. Closing with 'Shores of Purgatory', thresholds are breached anew with hectic guitar feedback, spectral synthesis and meditative melodic embellishments. Where the mirror blinds, the P:R:I:S:M offers vision—refractions of new perspectives, dissolving the shadow-self.

In celebration of our 20th year as a label, we've gathered 22 artists on 20 tracks, all graciously presenting us exclusive and unreleased material. Featuring AJNA, ASCENDING DIVERS, ASHTORETH, BECKAHESTEN, CURSE ALL KINGS, DESIDERII MARGINIS, FUNERARY CALL, KAMMARHEIT, LEILA ABDUL-RAUF, NERATERRÆ & DØDSMASKIN, NEW RISEN THRONE & CORONA BARATHRI, NORDVARGR, ØJERUM, SHEDIR, SHRINE, SOPHIA, SUTEKH HEXEN, TAPHEPHOBIA, VISIONS and VORTEX. We’d like to dedicate this release to our worldwide supporters who’ve made this 20 year venture possible and to all artists involved throughout the years, whom with their unique approach to atmospheric music, have helped create the aural world that is Cyclic Law. Artwork imagery is by our close collaborator and friend Kristina Feldhammer.

Double CD Edition of 500 copies in 6 panels Digisleeve with 180x120mm poster, matt lamination. 20 Tracks. Running Time; CD1 56:57, CD2 57:17 EAN: 0679628554204

Release Date December 21 2022

More information: https://www.cycliclaw.com/music/cyclic-laws-20th-anniversary-label-sampler-2cd-/-dl-200th-cycle

Client: Altamont Apparel
Director: Mike McKinley
Composer: Harlow MacFarlane

Limited edition pressing on heavyweight 180 gram clear vinyl, released by Wic Recordings. Artwork by Andrew Barr and Bronwyne Sloley. Listen and purchase here