Svarte Greiner’s “Black Tie” is yet another astonishing entry into Miasmah’s ongoing catalog of extremely dark, extremely haunting yet extremely beautiful albums. Svarte Greiner also has the distinction of being label owner Erik K. Skodvin’s solo audio project, and it definitely fits comfortably within Miasmah’s extremely high quality releases.
This album breaks up into two pieces, each pushing the twenty minute mark. These are long form ambient pieces, but are definitely not drone. These are careful exercises in instrumentation and long form song structure, with gritty strings reverberating among gentle washes of static and haunting waves of feedback. “Black Tie” shows how misleading genres can be, since the only possibly qualification here is “dark ambient” and this isn’t overwhelming or oppressive as most music in that field can be. It is scary but more in that “What is lurking behind the corner?” scary versus the imminent doom that is typical. It is mysterious, ghostly and beautiful. It teeters between a slight sense of unease and being curiously comfortable.
