Sub-titled An Imagined Future, Glen Wiffen continues the fiercely independent mission displayed on two previous albums with a wildly ambitious concept double album.
His story follows the beleaguered human race after the planet Ruuun they’ve been living on for a hundred years starts withering under its dying sun, meaning they have to find a new home or perish. They hold a debate, joined by The Chroniclers, who believe data they collect may help find another planet. Amid increasingly extreme conditions, old spaceships are reactivated and these last survivors flee into deep space, except for The Chroniclers, who have charted every step of human evolution. Inevitably, Ruuun dies, sucked into the colossal vortex of time like a briefly flaring speck. The story may recall Christian Vander’s original Kobaian trilogy, but Wiffen does a magnificent job dispensing with terrestrial reference points, and depicts these cataclysmic events using glowering walls of black hole static, heaving subterranean drones and raging elemental fury, occasionally anchored by Leviathan drum beats or squalling guitar. Stretching conventions, this is a mad epic into unchartered vistas.
