Crone

Jeff Caxide's new solo project, Crone, delivers a strange, powerful, gentle and inexorable album. Featuring musical contributions from other ex-Isis members (Aaron Harris and Bryant Clifford Meyer), as well as artwork by Aaron Turner, Endless Midnight features drone with many of the hard edges of metal removed. What's left is a looping, elliptical sonic landscape that gradually evolves, sometimes swooping ecstatically around itself and other times gloomily oozing along. Whatever the pace, Endless Midnight is full of movement and forward momentum. Though this is a cyclical and repetitive work by nature, it's never boring. The intellectual, introspective tone of tracks like "Ghost City" encourages internal exploration, creating a mood that is more meditative than atmospheric. Listening to Crone is like staring at a blue-black ocean filled with slow ripples and profound power, and every now and again, the surface is disturbed by a weird, bright fish.