Review Igloo Magazine

The cover of Kryptozoologie, Martin Steinebach's latest composition as Compest, is a Duhrer-esque line drawing of a three-headed monster, a humanoid figure with the head of an ape, a bird and a seal. On the back of the sleeve there is a picture of a three-armed rabbit-headed man. These two figures and the arcane spelling of the record's title serve to anchor Steinebach's efforts in the mid-14th century. Kryptozoologie is composed of five untitled tracks, a complete suite of wandering ambience that seeks to create something new from the pieces of the old.

Ghostly voices reverberate through spectral tunnels as bells and drums are slowly struck while, elsewhere, radio signals are cut and spliced as counterpoint to slow drones and limpid tone poems. Squirts of static scamper across the aural landscape like two-headed squirrels darting from cover, and lowing horns made from hollowed elephant tusks sound their slumbering call from distant foothills. A pianoforte doles out a slow dirge with funereal drums providing the solemn heartbeat. Music for a medieval maypole ceremony whispers beneath a brushed polyrhythm of static and a groaning mechanical drone. Martial drums pursue a delicate bell melody and a pair of lost violins through a ruined graveyard of cracked stones and echoing tombs.

Kryptozoologie is mercurial. There is a ritual being conducted in here, an alchemical symphony of ancient melodies recreated with modern mechanical noises and instruments. Madrigals of glitch and elegies of warped drones play out against the plucked melodies of antique stringed instruments. Steinebach creates a medieval flavored ambient grimoire of acoustic, glitch, and industrial overtones.

Mark Teppo