The Stargazer’s Assistant – Fire Worshipper

House of Mythology / Zoharum (late 2023 re-release)

This, The Stargazer’s Assistant’s third album on House of Mythology, is an another gorgeously strung-out affair that seamlessly picks up the baton from their previous Resurgam I, Resurgam II, the sunken depths of which seem here lighter, bespeckled in a pinch of Mediterranean sun.

Each track feeds off the other, embers sleekly in, starting with the meditative initiation of “Agni”, a drone poem that gives the void a shimmering outline. A swirling prelude to the serpenting flute and grainy undertow of “Shamash”, a textural dine of circles within circles, those flickering key-tones spectre in doubling chants / incantations flowing a swollen tide of broken shells, mud-larking into the lullabying “Ishum”.

The butterflying flute work here is beautiful, sonics a new serene, resplendent in soft clanking glass and bell-like dings, its simmering satellites dimensionally expanding to fade into to the fourteen-minute album epicentre that is “Shalman”. An evolving canvas, coloured in dew-caught electronics and searching hues. The sort of ambience that brings to mind the purring contractions of Slowdive’s “Miranda”, slowly creeping into ney-like drifts and chanting mirage.

That locked-in drone easing in, its pollinating pull feeding a yarning vortex smashed into by a driven tribal percussive. A potent brew that knots you up wrestled by a savannah haze and bassy throb, as its panoramic pagodas funnel you to far-off lands, long-lost worlds. A lush labyrinth that sculpturally slices the space as those gong-like eruptions raise the headroom, clarinet-caressed and cantering.

Without doubt my early doors contender for track of the year, climatically fraying into a finale of dispersing vocals. The next, “Agneya” explores the amorphous, an ominously washed spaceage that drifts into the glass-caught appetites of “Odqan”. A track that tardis-tapers into star-kissed melodics and soured Sowiesoso-like tints, picked up by the backward glances and breathy intakes of “Ra-Atum”, pestle and mortared into a chalky crush.

Three delicate shamanic shifts in temperature that tonally wrap you up in their strangeness, slip with ease into the tabla-tied flavours of “Shango”, a Persian-like whorling on a spiral-armed medieval drone. A blast of density that flutters into the vaporous chorals of “Arinitti” and in turn season the Caligari-curled “Oya”, a gentle synth-like slumber grasping at some vastness with ever-ravenous eyes.

Fire Worshipper is another journey into the interior from The Stargazer’s Assistant you’ll be reluctant to leave.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-