Genitor Lvminis

Category: Ambient
Album: Virgæ

I think I’m suffering from clinical depression. I’m trapped in a dreary world that seems to be twitchy yet stagnant, nothing moving, life slowing down to a gray, soulless grind.

No, I’m just listening to Genitor Lvminis, whose 20 minute Virgæ 3” minidisk EP offers a dark wave of orchestral string patches, twinkling string-picking, bassy cello bursts and dark cinematic thumps. It’s a hypothetical soundtrack to the world’s dreariest, most depressing black & white student art film.

It is a well-mixed, beautiful-sounding piece of work. I will not discredit it on that account, but the most repetitive nature of the 13 minute “Virgæ (Part I)” is a bit numbing. The same orchestral cinematic strains continue to repeat themselves without variety for 11 minutes of the whole.

“Virgæ (Part II)” offers even less hope and more minimalism in the form of a most repetitious looping of drags across a cello with an array of slight background noises and string tweaks providing small amounts of movement throughout the whole of the seven and a half minutes.

Given the proper tools, motivation, and outlet, Magnus Engwall, the man behind Genitor Lvminis, could surely find a great home in the field of cinematic composition, even if those movies would have to be decidedly dark and hopeless.

 

from ReGen Magazine (~1/2005)