On "Sielun Kuilu" Abysse Des Âmes distil their dark noir avantgarde into an even thicker, slow-moving venom: electroacoustic shards and brittle surfaces drift in a black ether where every gesture feels weighted and terminal.

Sinking deeper into the fissure they opened on their debut, this feels less like a follow-up and more like a descent. "Sielun Kuilu' ("chasm of the soul" in Finnish) hinges on a volatile balance between control and corrosion. Electro-acoustic fragments of bowed metal, prepared strings, detuned keys, stray feedback, and contact-mic'd surfaces are captured in close-up and then left to drift within a lethargic, heavy ether.

Tiny collisions, a scrape against the casing, the resonance of a loose screw, become pivotal events in a landscape where time has been stretched and gravity recalibrated. Faint mechanical throbs and distant rumblings suggest activity in adjoining rooms, seeping through the speakers like poisonous bile. It's noir not because it quotes cinema, but because it shares that genre's obsession with unseen motives, offscreen threats, the sense that the real action is happening just out of frame.

Mastered by Pentti Dassum (Umpio). Comes with A5 booklet insert.