Alice Kundalini is releasing the second album under the She Spread Sorrow monikier, following the her debut full-length, Rumspringa. Forged in the death industrial heritage of Cold Spring records, she continues to implement fierce power electronics over her bleak ambiance. The form she takes in Mine is a continuation of the sound of Rumspringa. Dark and pensive in its narrative, but powerful and harsh underneath the surface, Kundalini continues to craft her sound.
What is really telling about She Spread Sorrow, and in big part dominates her sound and the new album, is the contrast between two diverse worlds. The project leans towards the harsher sound of death industrial, applying noise and extreme methodologies, but the result is always atmospheric. This comes early on from the opening track, where the drones, sampled sounds and whisper overwhelm the narration. Taken separately, none of these elements would be considered atmospheric. The whispers are harsh, the drones suffocating and the samples abrupt, but put together they become less forceful, operating at a subliminal level. In a sense this is a minimal work, exactly because of this intricacy, featuring the death industrial elements, but in a diluted dosage.
It is easy to get lost in works that are more ambient, staying on a specific type of atmosphere or allowing a certain feeling to dominate an entire album, but Mine avoids that trap. Kundalini provides a series of different flavors when it comes to the ambient touch of the album. From the horror like themes of “Crushed On The Pillow,” she moves to the desert wasteland of “On The Bank of the River,” entirely switching the perspective and finely crafting an exquisite scenery. The palette expands even further, with “Lust” where the trip is taken to extraterrestrial proportions. Alien-like in its presence, with heavy drones transforming and a very powerful progression, She Spread Sorrow showcases all the possibilities that result from her take on death industrial.
It is these morphing capabilities that Mine encapsulates. Taking a slight step back from Rumspringa, Kundalini perceives better the overall purpose and the capabilities of her music. Through the darker pathways and the outbreaks in her work she traverses from the earthy to the psychedelic, entering a space of noise and destruction, but with ambiance always remaining the key focus. The evolution that has been achieved is wondrous, and it will be interesting to see how this is taken even further in the future.
