This is the great lost Trist album, the only one that hasn't seen some sort of official release. Slated to be on the mighty Insikt, the label owned by Kim of Hypothermia, itself in a state of limbo, "Slunce..." has attained, for me at least, the feeling of an unattainable treasure, a peak obscured by stars and hidden under the clouds, a destination that might never be reached.I cannot understate the importance of Trist's music to me as an individual. There are certain bands that speak to you on every possible level, whose music captures so perfectly what you feel and want to feel, whose aesthetics and ideologies seem so perfectly in tune with your own that you can't help but think that you were meant to discover this stuff. It's there to be a part of your life and help you illustrate the things that you can't always say, to give some sort of presence to the times when feelings and emotions become overwhelming, to be a sort of safe space no matter how scary the work itself. Trist does all of that for me. In my mind this is a perfect example of the incredible resonance that black metal, and really music in general, can have on someone. I can't really describe how this band's music makes me feel. All i can really say is that it's there with me and i get it and i turn to it when i feel like shit. This person's music HELPS me.
So i have sought this elusive record out for over a year. Technically it doesn't exist and there are no true physical copies. Why Insikt slept on this is beyond me; if i'm to equate the label with the person running it then i can only begin to imagine how overwhelming an actual release schedule became. Insikt's web site is no longer up and running but i have a pretty deep familiarity with Hypothermia; keeping that in mind the label's hermitage seems understandable, if not expected. But fuck, this record is gorgeous. It deserves release.
The haunting and heavenly cover art (featuring graphics and design by RH of Deep-pression, yet another band that swims through the sewer-like muck of everday existence) does a good job of painting the sounds. This is wispy, ethereal ambient music, as far removed as could possibly be from Trist's usual ultra-dirging raw suicide hymnals. This is a depiction of purgatory and regret, a fog of nostalgia and a ghostly feeling of incompleteness, a recollection of all the sadnesses that brought you to this. It's the beyond without beauty, an accounting of infinity tempered with tears. It's the end result of true failure.
For 35 minutes we are washed under the slough of droning, melancholic chord swellings. They go on and on, repeating and unending, like an eternal ocean. Drums make an appearance only to fuck with your conceptions of time and to create a deep-rooted sort of nausea; they too go on and on with no direction until they just stop, leaving only the masses of ambience to cloak you and drown you. I don't know if it's sad or triumphant or some sort of reckoning or some sort of eulogy-i only know that it is imbued with an intense and personal understanding of how hard this can be and how much it can take to just keep fucking going. The scariest aspect is that this composition doesn't offer any sort of promise after the pain. There is no guarantee of abatement; just a grey portrait of hopelessness and loneliness, surrounded by a great and empty vastness.
I don't know if i can summarize it. There is so much at work here with seemingly so little. This obviously goes beyond black metal and from a strictly musical standpoint i could see this appealing to those who enjoy Eno, Troum or M83's more exploratory pieces. I have seen some go so far as to categorize this record as "neoclassical;" perhaps the argument could be made for this to be placed under the "hypnogogia" classification. Regardless of the categorization it's an intensely affecting and powerfully presented musical statement. It stands apart from the rest of Trist's catalogue but still ties in to the idea of the work as a whole. I think it's amazing. It might be different for you.
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