Torus by Belial Pelegrim

My first encounter with the music of Belial Pelegrim would have been back in late 2015. I was relatively new to independent electronic music on SoundCloud and my world had been opened up to dozens of great artists. We had friends in the same circles, and I had invited Belial to do some work on several of the Mangled Music Collective compilations that I was helping put together. Through that, him and I struck up a friendship and we've become frequent collaborators, good friends, and we even spent the time to meet up in person. We're very excited to be hosting this new album "Torus" from Belial Pelegrim. We think it's amazing and we know you will too.

~Michael Southard - Triplicate Records

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This is the second album I've worked on where all the songs were written specifically for a singular project and not released beforehand on any other platform. With the exception of 'Inkdrinker', all of the ideas were based on dream journal notes from a succession of dreams over a two-month period. I tend to get a lot of mood and atmosphere inspiration from the places I visit in my subconscious wanderings. I've kept a dream journal for over 40 years, which has offered me a wealth of insight into how my mind works and why I have certain beliefs and philosophical slants. It has become apparent to me that all things run in cycles, that life itself is a circular construct. This shape, in a 3-dimensional world, is a Torus (2 × π² × R × r²). This theme permeated the way I worked on writing the songs on this album.

I used to think I wanted to score movies and tv programs, but as I studied the way that musical cues are constructed, I came to the realization that music devised for visual endeavors is listened to and absorbed in a much different way than music created for the pure listening experience. I decided to focus all my energy on making music that kind of bridges the gap between the idea adding drama to existing visual art and making music that presents it's own vehicle for the imagination.

Torus is the next logical step for me as an artist and dreamer. I want to thank Michael Southard for all the great advice and support as well as a superb job in mastering this album. A huge thanks to Bryan Kraft for his brilliant cover art. I'm very proud to release this album on the great Triplicate Records.

~Scott Krakoff (Belial Pelegrim)

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There's an unspoken expectation of indie producers; You will churn out an inhuman amount of music before you succeed. In some cases this results in shoddy work, rushing to meet deadlines. This is not a concern for one Belial Pelegrim, firstly because the man seemingly sweats music the way others do extracellular fluid (as a casual visit to his Bandcamp page will demonstate), and secondly because it's all very good. To borrow a phrase from Futurama's Bender in praise of ̶B̶e̶c̶k̶ Belial, he 'transcends genres as he reinvents them'.

Last years elephantine 'Troubles From the Next World' explored myriad subgenres in a double LP sprawl of electric wizardry. This years 'Torus' is similarly massive in terms of sheer scope of ideas explored here is mind boggling, as is to be expected of course. Textures ripped straight from some unexplored dimension weave a fabric of mystique so alien on opener 'Circle of Liquid Ambers' that when he finally drops a conventional drumbeat into the mix it feels revelatory. Following convention for Belial is equivalent to wild experimentation for his contemporaries and it shows.

After a strong opening gambit we're treated to the serene but propulsive 'Iris'; an excursion through Campfire Headphase-esque aural space littered with brittle percussive passages and a exploratory coalescence of synthesizers that seem to crank up the humidity as the funk-infused stop-start bassline and the occasional lick of guitar offer a sense of purposeful momentum. Speaking of momentum, the following 'Film' bubbles with synth-bass menace and a tricky time signature that manages to convey movement despite the notable handicap of being largely free of percussion. Here, the hardness of the keys and some unidentifiable echoey stabs in the background complemented by a hazy screen flicker fit the bill and keep things ticking over nicely.

With the fourth track 'Fainting in Coils' we have our first huge Belial bruiser of a track, which fans have come to expect. It's a joyous six minute romp through the electric boneyard with crisp drum-work and some neat foreboding reverberation effects which cut out around the halfway mark into a shadowy Twin Peaks inspired swing, complete with a nightmarish horn section which frankly sets the man apart from many of his contemporaries. This is where it hits home just how thoroughly Belial has mastered his craft as of late, all cylinders firing, all the 1's and 0's where they ought to be. Indeed these heights persist on the following beat-heavy vocoder trip of 'Sunbeams for Eyes', a SNES / 64-ish maelstrom of god-rays and particle effects that manages to seamlessly blend mellowness and a sense of urgency. 'Mystenthrax' then offers a chance to decompress, as the largely ambient piece struggles into a sweet but understated drum shuffle complete with disembodied voices and delightful melodic swirls, seguing nicely into in the insect-electronics ridden 'Tea Time in Brussels', which fuses micro-house textural sensibilities with a beat layout that jumps between freeform jazz and neatly structured dance stylings.

The eighth track, abbreviated here as HWMWTDOR fumbles in darkness and finds passage after passage of funked out hip-hop-y goodness and provides an interesting structural contrast against the formlessness of the following aggressively titled 'Liar'. One of the shorter pieces, Liar has a sense of time running out and all things collapsing in on themselves, all without a beat. Impressive to say the least. Elsewhere, Inkdrinker submerges the listener in a claustrophobic well of longing shadowy synths and haunting bass booms under an irresistibly catchy beat. This is one of the more understated tracks on the record, yet somehow manages to be the most effective in terms of conveying emotional progression and turmoil, especially in the last minute, in which the themes built upon thus far come at you all at once, this time bringing along a fun passage of keys to counteract the gloom.

Closing up, and in a similar vein to the penultimate track we have Pinquean Smallcreep, which wondrously ties together what Belial has accomplished over his lengthy career and serves as an appropriate mission statement for Torus as a whole. The lesson here is Belial is never going to stop bringing the gold, and you're never going to be disappointed. You know what to do.

~George Evans - Triplicate Records

Belial Pelegrim makes electronic music with a dark, melodic hue that casts intriguing shadows over his sonic soundscapes.

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