CD, Facthedral, 2004
www.facthedral.com
Chalung-gra has created timeless music of meditation and solitude on “Kalonga Incantations”, a limited edition, two-track release of 50 copies. It is music for coastlines awash in fog and filtered light, for glacial granite lakes, glass-surfaced with cold, deep serenity. It is music of reverberating colors and atmospheric wanderings – the music of the Aurora Borealis – equally haunting and mysterious. “Kalonga Incantations” lends itself to imaginative displacement; typical for the dark ambient genre it follows. From mellow, syrupy tones to vaguely grinding drones, “Kalonga Incantations” ressonates abstraction in a rather predictable fashion.
However, with the extensive “Cari Cali” and “Kahloubhra,” Chalung-gra succeeds in rekindling interest in these banal dark ambient tones and drones with a show of quality and masterful competence. One might imagine landscapes of billowing clouds, moving in various distinct layers through the stratosphere, as “Kalonga Incantations” moves through its metamorphoses of airy synths and quivering bass. Nothing is sudden, no sound is unexpected, no pulse misplaced, and everything flows with a calming sense of majesty. Before long, the better part of an hour has stealthily slipped by unnoticed, and perhaps a portion of worldly stress and exhaustion has gone with it. This music is meant to transport the listener to no destination in particular, except simply beyond.
[7/10]
— Dutton Hauhart