"Cosmic Despair" is the second release of Wastelanders, a project of Dean Costello who, apparently is also active as Harpoon or Diatribes.
We are inside the ambient / drone world, and as the artwork suggests it, with a cosmic atmosphere but luckily not too psychedelic or instrumental, much more abstract, contemplative and introspective.
There is an absorbing quality with this record, something like rain or the enveloping darkness of the night. It is pleasant and subtle but never really groundbreaking, and you just float through these 53 minutes and 5 instrumental compositions mixing processed guitar and analogue synthesizer organ sounds.
It is the night and the night is deep and if you're on your way back home, the trip is still long to finish and you will only meet sleep when the first lights of dawn will appear, and these passing hours will belong to cosmic despair.
The first track, "The beginning" is particularly engaging with warm waves of organ sound, like summer heat reverberating from the ground while you walk at night under a vast open sky full of stars.
"Abstraction" is like focusing the vision on the multitude of stars while sitting on the ground at the top of a hill and slowly losing the notion of the terrestrial environment around us, like if we were breathed in inside the space, and the next track, "Cosmic Despair" is all about this sense of disconnection.
I'm more skeptical about "Expanding Mental Universe" which is more like an aimless divagation in comparison with the slow progression of the three first tracks.
The last track, "The Crossing", is much more pleasant and almost mind blowing, an appeasing view under the sun, invitation to contemplation with nice psychedelic accents (the tablas).
A nice album, even if not so original or exceptional.
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