Cóiste Bodhar, the new record by The Phonometrician out now on Lost Tribe Sound, is named after a similar Celtic folktale, this time from Ireland. The Cóiste Bodhar is a death coach that was said to move through a town or village, driven by a headless coachman and his four black horses. To see or hear this visitor was a terrible warning, a portent of death for either the witness or a close family member. The album takes inspiration from these tales to explore both the concept of death and our relationship with it, the strange combination of inevitable mundanity and arcane superstition and the role of art and ritual in every culture’s attempt to explain and cope with it.

The recording project of Mexico City-based composer Carlos Morales, The Phonometrician creates dark, folk inflected ambient/neoclassical music that fits neatly alongside other Lost Tribe artists such as William Ryan Fritch, Western Skies Motel and Alder & Ash (aka Adrian Copeland, who guest stars with cello on the track ‘Death Rides a Horse: Part II’). Morales constructs his compositions from a palette of acoustic guitar, Venezuelan cuatro and synths, the stringed instruments’ cyclical melodies moving above a collection of low-end groans and stomps and thuds, all of which add a foreboding depth and weight. This ominous, uncanny atmosphere is set right from the beginning, opener ‘Death Rides a Horse: Part I’ embodying the approaching coach as it gathers momentum, like a cloud of dust in the distance growing larger as it’s thrown up by those four black steeds.

But if ‘Part ‘’ sees the death coach on the horizon, ‘Death Rides a Horse Part II’ sees it arrive in all its terrible glory. A piece all galloping hooves and quick snorted breaths, Copeland’s cello screaming in an awful hum that sends the townsfolk fleeing to their homes and locking their doors. The sound of fear manifest as an otherworldly visitor, and whether this visitor is real or imagined is beside the point. Because it is the result of thousands of years of ritual and superstition, of genuine emotions of terror and grief.

The funereal march of ‘Death is a Woman’ is a patient slow-burner, making its way unhurried towards its inevitable conclusion, while ‘I See You’ pairs signature tumbling melodies with distorted gusts and howls, like an alien wind across some scorched plain. In comparison, ‘The Light’ feels like something of an aftermath, a misty dawn-time calm descending with the faint solace of weak morning light. It’s just one moment on the record of something like peace and is indicative of how The Phonometrician refuses to simplify its complex subject matter. Death and its surrounding customs are handled with far more than the obvious sense of doom. So while Cóiste Bodhar has its bleak moments, there are feelings too of acceptance, a renewed vigour for life, and even wonder at the sheer unknown that we will all face eventually.

And this is the record’s ultimate strength. The Phonometrician avoids empty platitudes and refuses to offer simple answers, swapping faux wisdom for the instinctive and the ritualistic. In doing so he captures the darkly magnetic pull of the folktales that have been told by people the world over, and both laments and celebrates the eternal mystery that we are no closer to unravelling today. Because no matter where we are from, or how far we feel we’ve come, death is unyielding, and belief in its weird portents will continue to be general.

Cóiste Bodhar is out now via Lost Tribe Sound and is available from The Phonometrician Bandcamp page.

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Copeland’s main tool is a cello, which, with the help of a loop pedal, paints pictures that are vividly affecting. The music of Alder & Ash is strongly influenced by the natural world, and brings with it all of the beauty, complexity and horror that can be found in nature. As the bio on his Bandcamp page states, “Alder & Ash is a counterpoint of two extremes. The music lies in stillness, introversion, and penitence. It lies in violence, cacophony, and angst.”

The entirety of Clutched in the Maw of the World has this balanced atmosphere, from the quiet beginning of ‘The Merciless Dusk’, with its stark and sombre cello like a breeze on some distant North Sea shore, to the ominous ‘A Seat Amongst God and His Children’, which begins with vaguely martial percussion, joined soon by the same wheezing cello. But things take a turn for the strange before too long, the instrumentation blown-out and distorted, moving from ominous to downright unsettling, like the manic brain patterns of some volatile and war-crazed leader.

This is a recurring pattern with Alder & Ash. Like much of the Lost Tribe catalogue, their music is undeniably atmospheric, with a widescreen, cinematic feel, but this is not just some soundtrack to rugged vistas. Yes, on the surface it’s stark and elemental, as old as the landscapes that inspire it, but it becomes quickly apparent that it’s weirder than that. There are as many nods to experimental drone and doom metal as there are to classical convention. Think Warren Ellis meets Colin Stetson, beauty and abrasion laying side by side. This is neoclassical aimed through the prism of a fever dream, like an anthem for some ancient Nordic race.

‘The Great Plains of Dust’ is a great example of this, the reverberating march of its percussion like some terrible army approaching mirage-like on the horizon. This ominous pursuit falls away in the middle section, a period of quiet paranoia, the guitar a mere scorpion scuttle. ‘Seeds of a Sallow Earth’ is altogether more reserved, while ‘The Merciful Dawn’ winds and wends like a cool wind across a blue-grey morning. The final track ‘The Glisten, The Glow’ again lacks the harsher edges of some songs, instead closing proceedings with a sense of grandiose melancholy, like viewing a scene of apocalyptic ruin dappled in dewdrops and moonlight. It’s a fitting end to a big, complex and challenging album, one where wonder and dismay stand side by side, and where beauty is always present, even in the strangest and stormiest moments.

You can get Clutched in the Maw of the World via Lost Tribe Sound and from the Alder & Ash Bandcamp page. It’s available as a download or limited edition handcrafted CD, which can be bought in a bundle with the other Alder & Ash album, Psalms for the Surrender. If two albums aren’t enough, consider joining the Lost Tribe Sound subscription series, A Prelude to Decline, which will get you discounted prices and all kinds of other goodies.

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