Rome - Hegemonikon - A Journey To The End Of Light - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

At the end of the project's 20th anniversary celebrations, ROME rings in the next era of the band with a fresh and visionary album The Hierophant. Whatever the great poets have affirmed in their finest moments is the nearest we can come to an authoritative religion or truth. It is in this spirit that ROME welcomes listeners into the temple of The Hierophant. The songs are both enigmatic and touching, a strange sacrament, elusive and half-hidden, like the gospel of a soft cult. Musically, the radically reduced folk of earlier work is still very much present, though different in calibre. Sprinkled with sparse percussion and dream-like string sections, each track unfolds like a veiled scripture; a collection of layered sonic devotion adorned with symbols and spells, demanding attentive and repeated listening.

Technological agitation. Narcissism fatigue. A galaxy of isolation. These are the new norms keeping Weyes Blood (aka Natalie Mering) up at night and the themes at the heart of her latest , And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow. The celestial-influenced folk album is her follow-up to the acclaimed Titanic Rising. (Pitchfork, NPR, and The Guardian admiringly named it one of 2019's best.) While Titanic Rising was an observation of doom to come, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow is about being in the thick of it a search for an escape hatch to liberate us from algorithms and ideological chaos. InchWe're in a fully functional S**t show,Inch Mering says. InchMy heart is a glow stick that's been cracked, lighting up my chest in an explosion of earnestness.Inch And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow opens with the wistful, winsome InchIt's Not Just Me, It's Everybody,Inch a song about the interconnectivity of all beings, despite the fraying of society around us. InchI was asking a lot of questions while writing these songs. Hyper-isolation kept coming up,Inch Mering says. InchOur culture relies less and less on people. Something is off, and even though the feeling appears differently for each individual, it is universal.Inch Other tracks follow in kind. The lullaby-like InchGrapevineInch chronicles the splintering of a human connection. The otherworldly dirge InchGod Turn Me into a FlowerInch serves as allegory about our collective hubris. InchThe Worst Is DoneInch is an ominous warning, set against a deceivingly breezy pop melody. InchChaos is natural. But so is negentropy, or the tendency for things to fall into order,Inch she says. InchThese songs may not be manifestos or solutions, but I know they shed light on the meaning of our contemporary disillusionment.Inch

Atmospheric ballads, melancholic anthems and rootsy late night dance hall grooves recorded in London and Chicago with special guests Kelly Hogan, Edith Frost and Neko Case.