Review
Crone
Endless Night

I lost part of my virginity to Jeff Caxide.

No, not that virginity. Go get a dictionary, you sleaze. I meant that listening to Oceanic for the first time took just a bit of my naïve concepts of musical perception away. Though I had been a fan of metal albums long before then, that was the first I wanted to describe as 'beautiful.' It was harsh, and maybe just a bit painful at first, but it soon gave way to the most indescribably enjoyable feeling I had experienced in a long time. That music created such a warm, pleasurable feeling inside of me that—

Okay, on second thought, I'm just going to cut that paragraph off right there and move on to talking about his new project, Crone.

After only a cursory glance at his discography, it's pretty obvious that Caxide has a penchant for music that focuses heavily on ambiance; his works with Isis, Spylacopa and Red Sparrowes display this in abundance. In that respect, Endless Midnight seems to be the logical conclusion of his music, eschewing traditional concepts of meter and time entirely in favour of unfettered ambient music. This isn't minimalist rock, this is ambience in the pure, reminiscent of Light Under Water or even Devin Townsend's more experimental albums like The Hummer.

As with any ambient album, it can be extremely trying on your patience. While it doesn't require you to sit around for twenty hours at a time like you were listening to N?nø?ÿbbŒr? Vbë????lökäävs?, it still takes some effort to listen to this album attentively. I personally found myself looking at the timestamps just a tad too often. Actually, that's probably a side effect of the composition rather than the ambient nature—whereas most ambient music still has some sense of development to each piece, Jeff seems almost determined to pummel each idea he has into the ground. There is little to no change in his pieces; literally the same theme can be repeated, with very minor embellishment, for ten or more minutes on end. Usually, I'm a person who likes her music long; this album is one of the rare cases where the music drags on much longer than it should.

I don't want to attack Jeff's songwriting too much because, I'll admit, there are a lot of good ideas on this album. There just aren't enough of them. Only “The Silver Hammer” struck me as a piece I'd ever want to listen to again on its own merits. If the songs were shorter, or maybe had more development to them, the album would be much more enjoyable. As it is, it's good background music—but that's about as far as it goes.