{"id":3873,"date":"2011-10-26T17:01:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-26T21:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/existest.org\/ee_v3\/?p=3873"},"modified":"2011-10-26T17:01:00","modified_gmt":"2011-10-26T21:01:00","slug":"the-tenants-of-balthazars-castle-the-moon-cdr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/existest.org\/ee_v3\/?p=3873","title":{"rendered":"The Tenants of Balthazar’s Castle – The Moon CDr"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Tenants of Balthazar’s Castle<\/a> – The Moon CDr<\/p>\n

A.Star<\/a><\/p>\n

The liner notes for this release suggest one to wait until dark and listen in headphones with one\u2019s eyes closed. With a preface like this, I expected some deep, dark ambient or some pulsating, entrancing death industrial. On \u201cThe Moon\u201d by The Tenants of Balthazar\u2019s Castle, that\u2019s not quite what I got. The first track takes on an extreme ambient quality, then suddenly segments into The Voice of the Moon<\/em>, an obnoxious piece with \u201crandom\u201d synth wankery. While the transition is sudden and doesn\u2019t do anything for the album as a whole while the entire track, what\u2019s worse is that the entire track probably could have been scrapped.<\/p>\n

From there on, \u201cThe Moon\u201d consists of some decent ambient work with heavy doses of psychedelia thrown in. \u00a0Life on Earth<\/em> hammers away at a constant, pulsating sound. The Moon Moves<\/em> consists highly of low frequency bass rumbles and then transitions into a reverberating wall of ambient psychedelia. Within its twenty minute span, we get all the previously mentioned elements plus a random burst of noise. The track is very meandering and random and tends to lack cohesion, but it\u2019s not awful.<\/p>\n

Lamplighter<\/em> features a heavy drone with avant garde horns, similar to Ground Zero\u2019s Consume Red<\/em> album. The End\u2026<\/em> is probably the most solid track on the album with a churning industrial sound and lots of weirdness throughout.<\/p>\n

Overall, \u201cThe Moon\u201d isn\u2019t a terrible album and has some solid spots throughout, but taken as a whole, the experience is not quite as engrossing as The Tenants of Balthazar\u2019s Castle promised. A lot of the sounds here are pretty one dimensional and the entire thing lacks unity from track to track. The only real elements that join the tracks together are the psychedelic aspects. Decent effort, but could have been much better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Composition:<\/td>\n\"★\"\"★\"\"☆\"\"☆\"\"☆\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Sounds:<\/td>\n\"★\"\"★\"\"★\"\"☆\"\"☆\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Production Quality:<\/td>\n\"★\"\"★\"\"★\"\"½\"\"☆\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Concept:<\/td>\n\"★\"\"★\"\"½\"\"☆\"\"☆\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Packaging:<\/td>\n\"★\"\"★\"\"½\"\"☆\"\"☆\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Overall Rating:<\/td>\n\"★\"\"★\"\"½\"\"☆\"\"☆\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Tenants of Balthazar’s Castle – The Moon CDr
\nA.Star
\nThe liner notes for this release suggest one to wait until dark and listen in headphones with one\u2019s eyes closed. With a preface like this, I expected some deep, dark ambient or some pulsating, entrancing death industrial. On \u201cThe Moon\u201d by The Tenants of Balthazar\u2019s Castle, that\u2019s not quite what I got. The first track takes on an extreme ambient quality, then suddenly segments into The Voice of the Moon, an obnoxious piece with \u201crandom\u201d synth wankery. While the transition is sudden …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-webzine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/existest.org\/ee_v3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/existest.org\/ee_v3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/existest.org\/ee_v3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/existest.org\/ee_v3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/existest.org\/ee_v3\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/existest.org\/ee_v3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3875,"href":"http:\/\/existest.org\/ee_v3\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3873\/revisions\/3875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/existest.org\/ee_v3\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/existest.org\/ee_v3\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/existest.org\/ee_v3\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}