Closing The Eternity - "Kosmodrones" [2011]

Artist: Closing The Eternity

Title: Kosmodrones

Genre: Dark Ambient, Drone

Country: Russia

Release date: 2011 (recorded 1999-2002)

Track List:

1. Только жёлтая заря
2. Только звезды ледяные
3. Только миллионы лет

It's time to post here something by the last major project of Anton Shafarostov aka 121 that wasn't featured on my blog yet. You might know 121 by such projects as Velehentor, Valhalla, Nuclear Winter, or Кобь, or if you can read Russian - by his Twilight Shadows webzine (which, unfortunately, seems to be defunct now). Under the CtE moniker, he released several space ambient/drone albums whose main theme is the insignificance of Earth and the human civilization on the cosmic scale:

"The sound of CLOSING THE ETERNITY is based upon drones, and developed with ambient and noise touches. The first and the second albums were written in very misanthropic and materially-minded way. Then 121 made a pause to conceive the essence of CLOSING THE ETERNITY as a ultimate abstraction from all human-related aspects… from everything that could be concerned with terrestrial civilisation"

Like the other projects of 121, CtE sounds quite professional when compared to most other underground music projects in 90's and early 2000s' Russia. Let's be honest: drone ambient is often considered to be quite low effort genre, but this can't be said about CtE, despite the minimalistic composition of the music. According to 121, he became interested in ambient music after he heard "Comala" by Jorge Reyes as a kid in 1986, but he started making his own music only in late 90s. 121 himself describes the sound of "Kosmodrones" as "deeply spatial dark drones with distant and haunting melodic lines". The track titles are taken from a short nihilist poem by Georgy Ivanov, which is one of my favourites too.

121 seems to have completely quit making his own music after the release of the "Ceremonial Death" EP by Velehentor, although he mixed and mastered albums for several black metal bands in the last few years. According to this article (which even mentions my blog, by the way), the maestro was also spotted at a 2013 convention of electronic music composers in California. And yes, he's now a high-ranked official, which isn't a big surprise - after all, prime ministers and even presidents that listen to metal aren't unheard of, and misanthropy is a trait that's certainly expected from a public official, but... Just watch this video. Does that man wearing glasses looks like a black metal musician? Yet he is (or, at least, was):

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