Not one to indulge in lengthy promotional campaigns full of tease and mystery, Jute Gyte simply released his most recent work, «Birefringence», last Monday. Oddly enough, given his usually relentless release pace that got to a point of four albums per year throughout the 2010-2013 period, «Birefringence» is his first black metal full-length since 2017’s «Oviri». Recorded between June 2017 and February 2019, it thus marks the artists’ return to his trademark microtonal dissonant approach to the genre after last year’s ambient tour-de-force «Penetralia».

Similarly to what he did in the past, particularly amidst the many trilogies of his discography, the liner notes present in the release offer a rich perspective into the inspiration sources for the material. These include many references to serialisation of pitches, rhythms, and effects, as well as the explicit display of a random sequence of 24 numbers, from which “several tracks on this album draw.” Those mathematical aspects notwithstanding, the “album was written more freely than the last few”. Finally, influences were drawn from academic and literary works such as «Europe: A Prophecy» by William Blake, «Serial Music, Serial Aesthetics» by Morag Josephine Grant, «Persuasion & Rhetoric» by Carlo Michelstaedter, «The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism» by Keiji Nishitani, «Against the Day» by Thomas Pynchon, and more generally from Walter Benjamin, György Lukács, James Tenney, and Robinson Jeffers.

«Birefringence» was independently released on July 1 on cd and digital formats, both of which are available at this location.

You can follow Jute Gyte on Bandcamp.