SECRET PYRAMID: The Silent March LP
Secret Pyramid "The Silent March" LP
Originally released in 2011 on cassette by the Canadian micro imprint
Nice-Up International, “The Silent March” is the precursor to 2013’s
“Movements of Night” and can be seen as something of a mission statement
for Amir Abbey’s skyriding Secret Pyramid project. Critics have
compared the Secret Pyramid sound to the more blasted entries in the
Popul Vuh catalog and to Flying Saucer Attack’s cherished fuzz
devotionals, and indeed Abbey’s reverb-drenched songforms and titanic
edifices of drone do feel at times as though they’ve been cut from the
same cloth. Opener “Outside” might be best understood as the soundtrack
to slow-motion video footage of a first-person plunge over some
impossibly grand waterfall on an endless loop, as tumbling overtones
fight for air amongst turbid plumes of distortion. “Still Return” finds
acoustic guitar figures struggling to escape a blinding mist, their
resolution finally arriving in the form of the sublime tranquility of
the titular track which follows. Abbey masterfully weaves themes of
birth, death, nostalgia, and existential dread into an album which is as
cohesive as it is all-consuming, a spell which seeks to simultaneously
welcome and protect against darkness in its many forms. This edition of
“The Silent March” features an improved mixdown by Abbey and a remaster
by James Plotkin to insure maximum transport.
Tracklist:
1. Outside
2. Come Down Gently
3. Still Return
4. Silent March I
5. Her Spirits
6. Eternal
7. Silent March II