Review: Hüma Utku – Gnosis

KARLRECORDS.

What is contained within the thick fog of Gnosis? At points I can discern traces of chanting voices, or the hiss of winds rushing through stone tunnels, or the echoes of a lost music. They congeal in the dark, loitering like a residue of the ancient past, smothering space with the ever-thickening vapour of its own history. Ultimately I sense an evocation of shapeless, eternal truth – the howls of a knowledge that defies articulation but nonetheless soaks through the ribbon of time. It shrinks, expands, changes colour – slowly transiting from a sharp kettle hiss to an unravelling whistle of microphone feedback, like a language spoken in an alternation of sibilance and wide-open vowels, pronounced as slowly as the moon passing through the sky. Perhaps I can acquire its secrets if I listen patiently enough?

Meanwhile, the low frequencies belong to the earthly domain: guttural electronic thumps, intermittent drums, bass synthesisers that sound like rocks dragged across eachother. Each motif is patient and repetitious. Between these elements a duality is formed, as the world of physical, irrefutable sensation collides with the spectre of timeless immateria. On tracks such as “All The Universe Conspires” it’s clear that the two are in dialogue with eachother, as strange groans trace the peripheral outline of the pummelling beats, or trace crooked harmonies across the bass that whirrs through the centre. The body responds to the spirit and vice versa, as Hüma Utku thins the membrane between them through her persistent effort to generate unity.