Infiltrator - Black Light Therapy FLAC album

Reviews: Infiltrator- Black Light Therapy (Review: I DIE : YOU DIE)
Infiltrator’s LP comes shrouded in the sort of myths which usually accompany black metal releases. An anonymous collective of Swedes recorded harsh soundscapes to cassette, left them to molder for twenty years, then revisited them and applied further textures. The whispers of time in mental institutions in the interim are almost to be expected.
I’ve no idea what’s fact and what’s fiction when it comes to Black Light Therapy‘s origins, but it certainly sounds like the end result of the above story, and that’s really what matters more than empirical reality in cases like these. Its seven tracks are built on a foundation of muted, rumbling noise which recalls both comparatively recent developments in ambient black metal and the classic power electronics tradition which it claims as its lineage. Vocals and less abrasive electronics (presumably the recent additions) are blended in expertly.

In a sense, this dynamic between harsh, seemingly random sonic chaos and more composed and subtle elements might make Black Light Therapy some folks’ Platonic ideal of any record which touches upon the undefinable borders of whatever one categorizes as noise music. It’s likely to terrify and repulse those unfamiliar with such aggressive and uncompromising cacophony (again, staying true to the isolationist dogma of classic power electronics cassette culture), while never ceasing to be engaging, immersive, and possibly even relaxing to aficionados, who might find parallels with, say, Mark Spybey’s early Dead Voices On Air work or the the less rhythmic areas of the Cold Meat Industry catalog.
So often music of this sort couches itself within the categories of either ritual or endurance test; respectively, the listener is promised that he or she either will be transported into an altered state precisely crafted by the musical alchemist, or will emerge from combat with the record battered yet stronger for the conflict. The promotional copy cites the former as this record’s purpose, but I don’t think that’s its primary strength. Rather, Black Light Therapy deserves praise purely on the basis of its craft and composition. It’s rare that one gets such a satisfying listen out of this type of stuff, fer chrissakes. For all of the external hoopla about its creation myth, Black Light Therapy is a work which demands careful, repeat listening solely on its own intrinsic merits.


Reviews: Infiltrator- Black Light Therapy (Review: Reflections Of Darkness)
I read in the press release almost mythical stuff. That it took for the band about 20 (!) years for a “proper” release of this work, that it was in extreme limited circulation in cassettes in the Swedish underground scene in the 80’s and the 90’s, that the members of the band were in and out of psychiatric wards and that they refuse to be known to the point that I have no idea at all of even how many they are (though I think they are two) and that they present themselves as a sect rather as a band. I also read something else as well; that this CD is a “harrowing document of addiction and accelerating mental illness”, an introvert exhibition of depression. Even if all of the above is correct this release is sheer brilliance and it does injustice to this work to represent it as an accelerating mental illness. And at this point one does not know where the truth ends and the marketing begins. Yet harrowing it is. It opens with sounds similar to the nights of ‘Silent Hill’ in order to slip progressively into more Noise and experimental aspects. What is striking in the whole process is that the aspects of tonality, which are like islets in this CD, are forcing the listener to feel more uncomfortable within these than those of atonality. And they are accompanied by howls and incomprehensible words. Indeed, something is falling apart but this is not their minds under the Nordic winter but the world that surrounds them crushing the physical and mental existence of the creators. The feeling that ‘Little Ballet Dancer’ provokes is that this dancer is unable to do anything in a world of rumours, media and noise that erase not only the music but the feeling as well. It is like a journey to the past, a crushed past that is, mournful yet under the realisation that it is irrevocably lost as it is under pointed by the slow piano section of its ending. The blind anger of ‘Losing you’ escalates in the ‘Dirty magic’ in order to reach the peak of the chaotic noises of the ‘End’. And after that, in ‘Drown’ - which will remind you the opening of DEPECHE MODE’s ‘Stripped’ - the “narrators” instead of a happy ending seem to choose to accept world that they cannot change, to live there even as its victims. In the end there’s no one to be addressed with “come with me into the trees...” and the solitude is the most natural of all choices. In short, this is the music that Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt” might have written as he lays defeated by the world. In a more visual level, if a single image was suitable of being delivered with this music I think that this might as well be the image of a comet above our heads. With its dark sides and its luminous ones changing positions, in a constant flux, resembling but never equal either the Sun or the Night. And the last track, the head of the comet, comes as a bitter realisation that we are incapable of both genuine tragedy and salvation, only of their pitiful, hurtful and painful caricatures. Is this depressive? Hardly so. It is a work of Art that rightfully rivals many avant-garde artists and works of the past. It is ironic that I’ve known either personally or have reviewed the work of many so-called artists, with zero talent and an Eiffel Tower of ego and attitude, cocksure parading dumb down brigades, and there are true artists, who are the real stuff full of insecurities dressed as theories. But I can’t blame them; indeed Guy Debord was right - “All that was once directly lived has become mere representation”. As I already said, under these circumstances solitude and oblivion are the most natural choices. Yet, it is such a shame...
Rating Music: 10 Sound: 10 Total: 10 / 10

Reviews: Infiltrator- Black Light Therapy (Review: Side-Line Magazine)
The 2nd release on CCP is totally different than The Pain Machinery (being their 1st release). Infiltrator is a quite intriguing project as their debut CD took 20 years to get achieved and, the member(s) don’t want to be identified. The only thing that has been revealed concerns the Swedish origin of the project plus the fact the member(s) have been in and out of psychiatric wards for the better part of the last decade. It can be all true or just a marketing trick, but one thing is sure, the sound of Infiltrator is quite disturbed. It starts off with a mix of electronic noises, which progressively move into dark soundscape compositions. A kind of spooky voice emerges on “Little Ballet Dancer”. The more you walk through the haunted universe of this album the more you feel like you are surrounded by tortured cellar atmospheres. The stupor comes to a climax on “End” where tortured screams are trying to find an exit. Right before this track “Losing You” feels like a signal to awaken the most secret and evil forces humankind has ever experienced. Infiltrator perfectly matches electronics and dark ambient, which finally unleash a pure schizophrenic sound. This is not the usual kind of dark ambient music and that’s what makes Infiltrator pretty exciting. (DP:7/8)DP.