Give yourself over to space. Aran of Lunar Aurora fame formed Trist back in 2000 as a side project but like most people I never ran across any of his recordings until much later. His first album was released in only 500 copies. Being a long time Lunar Aurora fan I like to see what various members are up to with other projects. Hin-fort is where it really started then. On Hin much of the ambience came from the guitar buzz and the rhythmic drumming, on Willenskraft it comes from nature sounds predominantly. On Hin spoken passages are rather intrusive, shocking you out of your revelry, that has been addressed on Willenskraft as well, much more seamless in transitions and more appropriately integrated into the flow. What started as an ambient black project split nearly equal black parts and ambient parts turned into ambient soundscapes created on synthesizer with backing natural sounds on Fort. “Unter Den Wolken” gives a good example of what to expect for a basic framework on Willenskraft.

I’m generally not a fan of movie samples sprinkled throughout, finding them mostly intrusive, like walking around in a video rental store, and that was the case on Fort. Aran has avoided that issue here as well. He has created a very organic ambient scape, which I much prefer to industrial noise scape. The song “Fort” had a nice piano passage, something else revisited this time, as well as the wave action used heavily on “Fort.” You could just put that song on continuous loop for sixty minutes instead of buying Willenskraft, but then you would miss all the nuances.

So here are some of the nuances. After many minutes of rough seas, some ominous tones start to filter through the crashing waves. Monotony of the high seas is firmly established twelve minutes later. For the next fifteen minutes the seas have slackened somewhat and very distant screams can be heard lost in the wind. Guitars and drums slowly rise to prominence over the next three minutes and the voices are still far off. The rhythm of guitars matches pretty well the rhythm of the waves. As guitar lines even out some keys bubble up from below along with some horns that do little more than groan and accentuate the keyboard loop. By this point the waves have faded out and the voices have faded in and by the end of the track they have faded back into the waves. For the next eight minutes noises from the depths are more ominous and the surf is more agitated, eventually whispers can be heard. Over the next ten minutes the drum and guitar dirge reappears for a time then it is the waves and gulls accompanied by steady simple drumming and minimal piano intonation. The whispers may be just the wind. There is a brief up tempo surge. “Verhinderer” opens with the first clear vocals, storytelling style, with waves in the foreground and then machine guns. The final eight minutes is moans and shouting off in the distance and the guitar and drum duet is back, but just briefly, then it is back to whispers and waves, and then moans…

You know this cannot go on forever because a cd can only hold so much data, It will test your willpower to get through it.

[Visit the band's website]

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