Normally whenever I review anything associated with Michael Page I tend to go into hyper drive and spout off like a loose cannon about his main
musical project Fire In The Head. This review will be no different. I can’t help it. Although I will keep the grovelling to a reasonable level
this time around. Barring a few rare demos and vinyl releases I have everything released so far by this sickness inspired malevolent and highly
addictive act sitting proudly in my collection. F/I/T/H is the musical equivalent of an abattoir. You emerge from hearing his sounds a bloody and cut to a pulp mess. F/I/T/H is a violent horror show of sounds designed to give you pain inducing moments that remain vividly stuck in the memory banks. There. Finished. I’ve prostrated enough in front of the temple of F/I/T/H for this piece and will mention F/I/T/H no further.

Sky Burial is a Michael Page side project, along with Irukandji, where he explores a more diverse musical aspect separate from the one we don’t need to talk about anymore. “IV: Of Dharma and Drowning” is, naturally, Sky Burials 4th release. Following on from “Of The First Light”, “Spectrehorse” and the self titled debut, it carries on the tradition of all Sky Burial recordings to date by being more, for want of a better word, accessible compared to you know who. This isn’t to say that “IV: Of Dharma and Drowning” is a walk in the park on a hot summers day surrounded by half naked women. Michael might not bludgeon the listener with a meat cleaver like he does so regularly with */*/*/* but the cold dark atmospherics of this one track 18 minute + piece are not for the faint of heart. Combining a differing array of source material, and coupling them to some heady electronics, the resulting sounds are processed and manipulated to produce this nightmare journey in sound. The piece starts off very slowly, a elegantly long drawn out note, before gradually building up in force, sometimes receding slightly, with the introduction of ever increasing weird diverse sounds. The lustrous sharpness of metal
and glass, or what sounds like those materials, collapsing on top of each other seems ever present. A voice pokes through the murky depths at one point throwing an air of confusion into the whole mix. As the pulsing waves echo and stream in unabated through the black void the feeling of an unnatural, almost alien, destructive force come to the fore. All around the enveloping sounds rumble and clatter ever onward to its inevitable conclusion. Not with the huge bang as you would naturally expect but of a force finally fragmented and spent. The last fading notes the remnants of what was.

Don’t be fooled in anyway by the length of this 3 inch CDR release. Michael has crammed enough innovative moments onto it that to have made it
any longer would have reduced the overall impact of the piece. “IV: Of Dharma and Drowning” is a superb piece of dark atmospheric music that will melt the minds of even the most cynical amongst you who feel this style of music has nothing left to offer. Be prepared to be enlightened.

Two last personal thoughts worth adding:

1. The first edition of this release is limited to just 100 copies. Normally I would berate any label for such foolhardiness but I’ll make an exception here for Silken Tofu. Why I don’t know. Must be the effect of the music on this release that has turned me into a nice guy for once.

2. I’m going to have to interview Michael Page one day. Anyone who combines the talents of a musical maestro, painter and author so successfully deserves one. If I ever get round to it, and he agrees to be interviewed by an idiot, you’ll see it here first.