Procer Veneficus - Ghostvoices (2006)

Since 2004, California resident, David M. Schultz has been (in his own words),"Converting dreams (both waking and sleeping) and an attitude of absolute dedication to the whole of nature throughout the universe into an audio format."

Nowadays with eleven full-length albums behind him he's explored this thought through various forms of music, such as raw black metal, dark ambient and here on his fourth album he took an entirely acoustic path. On, ‘Ghostvoices’ we get forty six minutes of foggy inducing experimental acoustic guitar music and throughout this recoding the listener is treated to light slowly strummed acoustic guitars with a damp backing ambiance and off in the distance incoherent whispers are heard.

The music gives me the feeling of slowly walking through nameless lands of complete desolation while rain lightly drizzles to my head. As I look onward I see endless fogginess, which seems to consume everything around. The remote unintelligible voices around me send shivers throughout my body, letting me know that something is out there. What it is I ask; that isn’t to be easily answered as it doesn’t sound of this world. Moving further in I come to an old creaky bridge, the wind blows hard where I fall into a psychedelic daze, just to wake up in my own bed and soon realize it was all just a reverie…or was it?

Ghostvoices is an ideal record to play late at night with rain lightly falling or a just a beautifully eerie creation to put on as you pass into sleep. Or if you're a bit more daring I highly suggest listening to this album while wandering through a forest late at night or early in the morning. I even once took this album with me down to the beach very early in the morning while most everything I saw was shrouded in fog. As I walked along the music, although basically instrumental, really spoke to me in a way I hadn't previously felt it. The effect was quite mesmerizing to say the least.

I unfortunately haven't really kept up with Mr. Schultz's work, but after throwing this album on again I've realized I really need to pick up and see what other strange and wonderful musical paths this guy has taken his listeners on in recent years.