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Feed Your Head

"FEED YOUR HEAD" is the long-awaited and mercilessly honest debut album of Ophelia The Suffering's solo project ECSTASPHERE. Conceptualized for the listener as a journey into the artist's mind, for herself as reprocessing and deliverance, the album addresses segments of Ophelia's life, mechanisms in her psyche, as well as fundamental motives of her aspiration. It is an album full of contrasts, stylistically and contextually - the game of the warm and the cold, the hard and the soft, the loud and the quiet. What may seem paradoxical at first actually amounts to a peerlessly accurate portrayal of Ophelia's soul. Secession and unification, lack and excess, desperation and hope swirl around each other in eternal ambivalence. But what underlies every single sound of this album is one thing: complete devotion.



It is a debut deliberately leaving many things standing open, yet still many raised questions become accessible by themselves throughout the record - motives are being taken up again, themes are being repeated and amended and broken open. "FEED YOUR HEAD" is to be understood as an artistic synthesis and should ideally be listened to from beginning to end - all of the tracks blend into each other and build upon each other. The sound aesthetic displays a rather unusual duality, and this is also an intentional element of the concept - the breaking open of concepts becomes a concept.



"FEED YOUR HEAD" invites the listeners to release everything familiar for an hour and immerse into another person who is completely alone and completely salvaged in this music, perhaps to find a new approach towards themselves, or maybe just to realize that music - as the most abstract of all art forms - can not only tell stories, give statements, make feelings graspable, but can sometimes also embody the key to a whole life. You are invited to feed me to your head.

  • Artist / Producer
  • Release Date
  • Lenght
  • Available Formats
  • Cat. num (physical)
  • Cat. num (digital)
  • Label
  • Mastering
  • Cover
  • Layout
  • Ecstasphere
  • 04/2014
  • 62:28
  • CD/Digital
  • raum-cd-13
  • raum-net-35
  • Raumklang Music
  • A. Dietz
  • Lisa Schwabe
  • Ophelia the suffering

Additional information

CDR / Digital

Reviews:

Blackaudio.wordpress.com [10/2014]

An all too brief chilling female vocal led piano, is halted with a crashing distorted beat on the opening track ‘Our Souls’. However, once the crashing layers of Powernoise fuse together, this is a long forgotten interlude; as waves of orchestration take precedence upon a rolling mass of Industrial beats.

Rather than the squelching mess I anticipated, Ecstasphere carve up their rhythmic assault in a polished, clinical fashion. As a genre, there has been an over saturation of this style in recent years that’s I have slowly become disenchanted with; luckily, there is enough utilisation of other elements at play within ‘Feed Your Head’, to halter this album fading into obscurity.

The vocal talents of Aphexia are paramount in bringing to life key components of this release; that and further pad and piano work of course and Ecstasphere deserve a pat on the back for not solely following the path chosen by many of their colleagues within this scene. There is a real sense of striving to drive an atmosphere, over purely pummelling the listener into submission and this is more than appreciated

Not withstanding however, is the ability of this act to punish the ears where necessary; and on more than one occasion focus is fixed squarely on battering percussion and distorted beat. Harmony is never too far away though and when things get brutal, there is just enough experimentalism at play to keep visceral moments tethered down, allowing for emphatic synth work to take precedence once again.

Overall, ‘Feed Your Head’ is an enjoyable release that provided more than I anticipated; and that alone deserves a tip of the hat. With a little more focus on production values, their next output could fair even better.

Tracklist

01. Our Souls
02. Make It Stop
03. A Cure (feat. Aphexia)
04. Symptomatic Metamorphosis
05. The Journey
06. Compensational Struggle
07. Dissosiation Reversed (feat. Aphexia)
08. Projektion
09. Fukc Nice Things
10. Disillusioned Dreams
11. The Fallen
12. Drifting On Rivers Of Deconstruction
13. Liebe Freiheit Alles (feat. Aphexia)

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