The internet contains some weird ways to discover music, and this aspect is a double edged sword because now everyone and their brothers and or sisters try to make music in their bedroom or basement or garage and put it up on their interwebz for everyone else to sift through; finding new music can be a giant pain in the you know what, but every once in a long while you can stumble across an absolute gem that can take your vitriolic hate for this situation and make you eat it. Finding Thee High Priestess is completely that case for me as, at the time, the one song that I heard instantly grabbed my attention and forced me to obsess over the song; the immediate need for more almost instantly kicked in after the last seconds of my second run through of the song that was available for people to sample (like the best drug dealers do); still, I bided my time (though, a few messages to Thee High Priestess herself certainly occurred) until a physical release materialized for me to listen to until it broke.
This tape is a dark and tense work that in the brief moments that it dashes listener’s ears with strange and eerie noises and subtle drones, there is a barely sufficient time to get a real handle on what Thee High Priestess has going on in the four short tracks that sparsely populate the cassette; the use of voices provide an element of focus for the churning ambient soundtrack, and while I cannot tell if they are all samples or spoken word or some combination thereof, the timbre of the actual speakers is yet another point of discomfort as each “speaker” brings a different quality to each track (be it creepy or menacing or ritualistic), bringing another atmospheric layer to the MMXII Demo. Listening to the Latin intoning while slight drones and rebounding sounds generate the bulk of the eerie vibe of “Ekstasis” or the white noise rumble that props up the deceiving tone of the female voice of “Controlling Loss” will give you a quick idea of some of the blasphemous recordings waiting to be heard.
Though the MMXII Demo is a first step into a larger world of droning, ambient chaos, Thee High Priestess easily demonstrates a solid, creeped out vision that tantalizes your ears with a promise of intense sound constructions and manipulations to come; and to be perfectly honest, the vision is not restricted to simply the sounds as the packaging and artwork fit the ominous vibe just about perfectly.
