Sa Bruxa - From The Depths - CD (2019)

Labels: Yoshiwara Collective
Review by: Alex Deller

With vague, minimal sounds Sa Bruxa (a.k.a. Giuseppe Novella) manages to conjure a wide variety of emotions … none of them particularly pleasant or wholesome. Dread, unease and a sense of nervous isolation lurk here, with nape-tingling organ drones and sporadic crackles slowly blossoming like the symptoms of a retinal migraine. Footsteps echo down seemingly deserted corridors. Rope creaks. Laboured breathing comes from a room you thought was empty. Secretive chanting bleeds into Brad Fiedel’s Terminator score, as experienced through a surfeit of very powerful cold medicine. That ‘From The Depths’ barely lasts 20 minutes initially feels like a blessing, but the overriding compulsion to keep it on repeat in order to peel away each gossamer-thin layer ultimately reveals itself to be a deep and lingering curse.