Aranos shows no signs of slowing down: this year alone he's released a live album, a 7" for Brainwashed Recordings, a live DVD, a full-length studio recording (Bering Sea) and a live album. And Soon Coffin Sings is an album filled to the brim with the sounds of the space-time being slowed down to an audible crawl. Sun Ra thought that space was the place, but Aranos must've decided that such a comment just wouldn't do and took the whole concept a step further: the space-time continuum is the place, a more ephemeral, seething place. If there were gods before the universe began, this might've been how they sounded: birds buzzing and calling out over tremendous spaces, questioning the absence of material and filling it with their cacophonous voices. Aranos' music has been especially voluminous as of late, being far more free in arrangement and more concerned with the shape of sound rather than melody and lyrics. This is the case here, but Aranos' choice of instruments makes the abstract sound homey. The buzz of a violin or the oscillation of metal sheets is familiar, providing all the comfort needed to listen to these three lengthy pieces. True to the (rather loose) form often associated with textured music, Aranos' sound encompasses a cinematic flare, using the fall of footsteps and the whisper of excited pipes to portray the architecture of a haunted house or the gravity of open spaces too large to understand. Consequently, the distinction etched out between the three pieces seems arbitrary, it's nigh on impossible to determine when one starts and the other begins. And Soon Coffin Sings feels like a single piece imagined in three movements—each moving the music towards the abstract—towards the inevitable hum that vibrates everywhere, in everything. Halloween might be getting under my skin, but the middle half of this album feels creepy, ringing, dancing, and rustling in subtle variations and reproducing the anxiety that something might be right behind me or just around the corner, watching and waiting for just the right moment to attack. Of course this moment never comes, Aranos only draws the anxiety through the album and never provides any moment where relaxation might seem like a good idea. A huge plus, as always, is Aranos' packaging: this time the album comes in a five-sided package that unfolds to reveal the picture of man with his arms outstretched, making a welcoming gesture. While the album isn't distressing or unwelcoming, it's certainly a strange trip, but one that Aranos is capable of soothing anyone into instead of thrusting them into the middle of a strange record with no immediate appeals. If Throat Clearance was Aranos' record for inner-space, And Soon Coffin Sings is the sound of that inner-world bleeding away and drenching everything in its viscera. - Lucas Schleicher