Regardless of what I say about it now, Scorn’s 5th album “Logghi Barroghi” is destined to be dismissed as just another in a long string of minimalist dark ambient beats.  In my opinion, it does distinguish itself from the others - it is one of the most unfriendly, minimal and alienating albums I know, and certainly the most ‘out there’ Scorn release to date.  Though it is hard to enjoy, it has the rare distinction of being a musical enigma.

Even by the standards of the always dismal Mick Harris, “Logghi Barogghi” represents a particularly deep and bizarrely unfamiliar circle of hell.  Its tone is one of nameless fear and confusion.  The messy, hallucinogenic red blur on the cover, like the vision of a individual massivelty inebriated at the point of despair and black out, staggering down a threatening and alien city street in the night, proves the perfect image for the drugged disoriented terror that is this album.  In a way it is more unsettling than his spacier ambient works as Lull because it brings the darkness back into the context of our urban everyday world with the organic sounds of the drums and bass.  These familiar timbres keep the listener grounded, prevent this album from providing the psychedelic escape into peaceful abstraction of space ambient.  Instead, it comes across as very dystopian.

These rough break beats fall into what at first seem to be sluggish hip hop grooves but soon morph into shambling mantras as layers and layers of rhythmic electronic ambience are quietly and systematically added.  The impatient listen will start to wonder around the 3 minute mark when the main hook / theme of the track will be introduced, only to be disappointed when the song ends 3 minutes later without ever resorting to anything of the kind.  Listeners able to immerse themselves in the subtle polyrhythms of these carefully constructed loops will find themselves drooling.  For those with time, this is a sublimely rhythmic experience.  Nobody can make a loop feel ’spiral shaped’ quite like Mick Harris.

Apparently, vocal samples cannot reach this abyssal plane without becoming stretched and mutilated into garbled nonsense.  Indeed, no words can really describe the emotion on this disk and would thus only cheapen it.  The sound palette here is incredibly stark; nearly every sound is muffled, chopped up, distorted and then muffled again, sometimes in very arbitrary and chaotic (yet emotional ways), resulting in a very gritty sounding production.  No sound can hold together for long.  The bass lines commonly utilize ungodly low frequencies, and may not even be audible on some lower budget systems.

“Spongie”, which is dominated by the sound of a whining mosquito turned drone, stands out as especially bizarre.  “Out Of” gets points for containing the closest thing on the album to a nice cleansing spliced break beat solo ala Aphex Twin or Venetian Snares.  “Black Box II” is refreshing with its sparkling high frequencies.  Mostly, though, as with every Scorn album since it became a solo project with 1995’s “Gyral”, the tracks, while all good, keep a very consistent sound throughout the album.  After you’ve heard a few songs, the rest of the album won’t surprise you.

All in all, a solid and unique Scorn album.  It is definitely possible to listen to “Logghi Barogghi”, though I feel that to really allow yourself to be absorbed into it is to willingly descend into some sort of psychological dead end.  Listen at your own risk.  4 stars.