About Album
Desolate Moon Phases is the new Minneapolis based project of multi-instrumentalist/home producer Wrathe (of Outer Gods). After moving to Minnesota in mid-018, Wrathe met Sole Servant at a local record store. A series of conversations about dungeon synth cassettes, 80s black metal and dusty keyboards birthed the small private press label/production house Stormmask LTD. The label would end up acting as a hub for several dark experimental home recording projects from Minneapolis, and the label compilation I am alone, but so are you arrived in the fall. During these sessions, Wrathe demoed extensively with Sole Servant, several sessions of which ended up comprising the heavily noise-leaning debut Desolate Moon Phases album As the Dark Empire Burns Around Them. After producing tracks for Sole Servant’s upcoming dungeon synth project, the two began to talk about doing a more avant-garde album, something that drew from a myriad of players in their growing anonymous collective.
Heathenstones employs the talents of everyone involved in Stormmask, players from Past Dawn, MELOK TYR, Azaael and Decrepit Pit all contributed. Like the compilation from last fall, this album exists at a crossroads of several sounds and individual aesthetics.
Heathenstones is a dark journey through humankind’s great impermanence, a moody atmospheric experience that interweaves blackened drones with shimmering ghostly synths and noisy electronics.