High Wolf/ Annapurna Illusion - Split

Yikes, here's some heady hits from the respective drone-noise bongs of High Wolf and Annapurna Illusion. Ant tells me they're both the same guy. Mysterious. I've put the Annapurna Illusion side on first. This is very deep, dark stuff. The first track kind of reminds me of Robedoor for the first few minutes, with heavy textures and harsh metallic drones taking the fore, before some melodic synths sneak in and take us somewhere else, only for the noise to reappear and threaten to overpower it once again and drag it back into the mire before they settle into a plodding groove over a two-chord repeated melody as bleeping and flickering discordant electronics hint at an underlying sense of panic. The second track seems to be a minimalist exercise in building tension, as synth and guitar lines layer and delay and decay over the primitive beat of a single drum, repeating a mantric east-meets-west melody throughout. It's like you're in an opium den but something's horribly yet imperceptibly wrong. Now I'm listening to the High Wolf side. This offering is positively therapeutic next to Annapurna Illusion's contribution to this disc. It's got a kind of neo-spiritual feel to it, with Eastern instrumentation/samples creating a landscape of loops and dubby echoes over which heavily processed vocals and synth wibble around blissfully. I think you're supposed to be high when you listen to this. It's all one track but it's split into four easily distinguishable movements, giving it a tidal feel as it builds and fades away. This guy's been compared to Emeralds and Sun Araw and it's not difficult to see why. This is blissful, tripped out stuff, a million miles from the paranoid, dread-laden tones of the Annapurna side.