Jake Muir hears black metal ghosts in the fog of Pareidolia

Jake Muir’s Pareidolia is a record about hearing something meaningful where other people might only hear atmosphere. Reviewed on 8 June, the album finds the ambient and field-recording artist turning toward the intros, outros and in-between moments of extreme metal records, then reshaping that raw material into ominous electronic architecture. The result is not metal in the usual sense. There are no obvious riffs to grab, no blast beats to push the body forward, no vocalist standing at the centre of the storm. Instead, Pareidolia deals in pressure, residue and suggestion. It asks whether the emotional weight of metal can survive after the obvious signifiers have been removed. Muir’s gift is in making sound behave like shadow: textured, artificial, disturbing and strangely beautiful. For listeners who think ambient music should always soothe, this is a useful corrective. Pareidolia is ambient as haunted machinery, and the machine is staring back.

Source: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jake-muir-pareidolia/