The White EP＜Clear/Smoke Black Vinyl/限定盤＞

Even though Agallochs career was essentially founded upon a fresh-sounding platform of black metal infused with folk music (their debut album was named Pale Folklore, for Christs sake!), the Oregonians proceeded to shift aesthetic gears over the years by following their black-folk-pagan sophomore masterpiece, The Mantle, with a third long-player, Ashes Against the Grain, that featured a no less inspired blend of gothic doom, death, and black metal, instead. 2008s The White EP, then, appears to have been fashioned specifically to redress this progression, by jettisoning most every sign of heavy metal -- black, death, or otherwise -- so that the band could revisit (and expand) the haunting acoustic guitar frameworks and atmospheric backdrops that made them so unique to begin with. Sure enough, electric guitars are used very sparingly throughout, as mere accents and shimmering backdrops to the primary, acoustic guitar pluckings that dominate sublime creations like The Isle of Summer and Birch Black (both reminiscent of Pale Folklore), and Pantheist (this one redolent of The Mantle, in all its gothic folk glory). Vocals, too, are treated like some kind of unnecessary luxury here: figuring only as chorused aahhhs in the last-mentioned track; as intimate whispers on the uncommonly lush Sowilo Rune (arguably the EPs most drop-dead gorgeous offering); and finally, crooning lyrics in the traditional sense for the straight-folk low point of Birch White. The remaining two cuts consist of a synthesizer-woven beehive of sound named Hollow Stone and a stark, piano-led coda named Summerisle Reprise, which along with The Isle of Summer and Sowilo Rune, contains dialog sound bytes from the 1973 cult horror film, The Wicker Man (for those who hadnt yet grasped the connection between both works). And not coincidentally, like that movies evocatively creepy soundtrack, The White EP also plays like a half-hour cinematic score all its own -- which is surely as it was intended. As a result of all of these superlatives, The White EP earns a special place within Agallochs formidable discography, virtually as essential as the groups stellar full-length albums. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia