Aural Pressure It starts with a horn. A loud blaring hunting type horn. The sort of horn noise to be found on very early PTV, Laibach or even 23 Skiddoo recordings. A nice horn that needs to be heard to be appreciated. I really like a good horn I do. Then it's gone. Just like that. I was going to do a Tommy Cooper gag but, as the sad unfunny fuck's dead, I'll respect his memory and won't. Bottle, glass, glass, bottle. Sorry. Back to the horn. Replacing the horn is a swirling, throbbing, garbled electronic overload of beat driven sound and a woman's wailing. Think of a less excessive Yoko Ono to get my drift. Works for me. In fact the whole recording works for me on many levels. There's an experimentation feel, stopping well short of the Avant Garde, that gives "Marches and Meditations" its own identity. Intense and subdued. Dynamic and rhythmic. It draws you like a moth to different musical genre lights. Flitting and never settling in one place long enough to get burned. Chants and mesmerising loops are the icing on the cake of this beauty. The atmospheres it creates are stunningly realised and the pleasure factor is never diminished.An excellent release and one that demands investigation by the more discerning readers of this site. Even without the horn I would be singing its praises from on high. Though the horn still did it for me. ANM

http://industrial.onego.ru In those rare cases, when to you on the way of aimless wanderings on the servers, the sites and simply to the scraps nightmarish home page is encountered the name of the association C.O.T.A., then compulsorily next you will find the word of tribal.The present sense of this term the same slipping off as u, let us say, groovy, but once those, who mention C.O.T.A., compulsorily to it refer, then one should following them recognize:this is very elegant tribal.By no means most present, since true tribal know how to dance only the priests of tribes, forgotten/lost in the jungle and distant from the civilization wallowed in the comfort, after eating till full any agitating and agitating feelings trash.But it is so good, to what extent were good the early disks of that rested Of yuybryds. 3tniko- ritual beginning in the percussion, whose constructions/designs infinitely repeatedly are repeated, it helps this music to take possession of thoughts and feelings of listener, is worthwhile only for it temporarily to be weakened, after lowering a little shielding barrier.You do think, these shaman percussion ways with you will not pass?Nothing, C.O.T.A. (that it is deciphered as Chyuildren Of To tyue To apochalypse) provided other levers of the actions, into number of which enter the measured buzzing background, and the suspiciously indifferent but ordered vocal exercises of chorus and individual personalities, which talk by the conspiratorial language of the released into reverse side tapes, and some strange and a little frightening noise, which impart of this music distinct industrial (that is to say industrial) nuance.Well and marches/flights/marshes here moreover, ask you?Willingly I will answer - with the fact that the music, concluded/included as hearth to guard, on this disk is executed in many places in the very energetic key/wrench.So it is desirable itself to present dark dense forest, blazing bonfire and ranks of sorcerers, shamans, priests and other scientific workers from the adjacent rural megapolises passing past it...Thus, conclusion/derivation is obvious and it is already practically supplied with sound:if to you brings satisfaction hearing the Belgian duet Of yuybryds of the times of their motto To tyue the ritual Of syuould b Of kept Alive, then American duet C.O.T.A., are confident, it will be able to report to you the mass of pleasure, almost larger.Especially as they so rarely gladden community by their relizami...

COMPUSION ONLINE
Marches and Meditations is a peculiar release that proved problematic in pinning down. Over the course of 5 tracks, and over 60 minutes of playing time, C.O.T.A. beat out primitive rhythms over electronics or pursue a purer ritual approach combined with tribal percussion and frenzied chanting voices. Their ritual ambience inhabits similar sacred spaces as Crash Worship ADRV, Psychonaut 75 and particularly Mother Destruction - a more apt comparison as both groups acknowledge their connection to nature, share a passion for feminine knowledge and express ecological concerns, The acoustic nature of C.O.T.A.'s debut is replaced by percussive and electro journeys but a few of the tracks convey an atavistic urge, a primal ooze - especially 'The Hunt' which invokes scenes of nocturnal ritual drumming deep in the heart of the wood.

HEIMDALLR
'Marches and Meditations' is the third album after the 'Terra-ist' tape and the 'Ta'wil' CD from this formation based on the other side of the Atlantic, Children Of The Apocalypse (C.O.T.A.).
The five titles that compose this opus offer an ingenious mixture of repetitive ritual, tribal sonorities. The largely present percussions are sometimes echoed by heartrending female cries, profound mystical choirs, in a dark, ritual, magical atmosphere, that borders the limits of trance. A recommended musical experience!
Of note, a first acoustic album 'The War of The Sons of Light and The Sons of Darkness' should soon see the day, featuring the major title ('The Hunt') of 'Marches and Meditations'...
-Nathalie F.