INSTINCTS / BUSTUM "The Mystery Visions" CD Reviews

From the Ortus Obscurum webzine (Sweden)
Those who heard Instincts on the nice Nord Ambient Alliance know what to expect. This is melancholic music centred around very simple melodies that paints pictures of grey days and autumn decay. Instincts music is beautiful in a sombre, isolated way, sort of like the early works of Mortiis, yet with distinct similarities in sound. Still, both acts share(d) a sound that invokes memories of times passed, portions of life that have been reduced to vague memories, swept away in the ever-passing flood of time. Instincts is far from a Mortiis clone however. I think the sound of this project is more or less unique, at least I don't recognise it. Yet sometimes it do remind a bit of old melodic raison d'être or Shinjuku Thief. If you are into minimalistic melodic music with a dark and melancholic mood, Instinct may be your next stop.
The artwork that comes with this release is very surrealistic. There seem to be a lot of symbolism confined within the art of Bustum, mainly from the 'death' or 'negative' realm. For example there are pictures of decaying landscapes, skulls, up-side-down humans, men cloaked in black (or white), a black sun with a twisted face and snakes slithering out of it instead of sun-rays. I think Bustum has done a magnificent job enriching this release with some really obscure art to contemplate on while listening to the dark tunes of Instincts. There is a certain syntony between the creations of the two artists which justify this collaboration. This is definitiely a release worth checking out. Ectonaut

From the FluxEuropa webzine (U.K.)
The Mystery Visions package is a musical/visual art collaboration between Instincts (Frédéric Arbour) and Bustum (Yvan Arseneault). Frédéric creates essentially simple but highly satisfying dark ambient soundscapes, whilst Yvan's contribution is 15 5"x7" colour cards featuring interesting and well-executed collages, their black-and-brown effect mirrored by the album's packaging.
The music is intense orchestral/neoclassical dark ambient reminiscent of Scandinavian projects like Arcana and Raison d'Etre. Simple but haunting riffs and explosive synthesised percussion penetrate rumbling atmospheric pads. Tracks typically commence with atmospheric sounds from which more conventional music emerges. Call me old-fashioned, but I think this hits just the right sort of balance between experiment and convention, resolving formlessness into form that satisfies my sense of artistic completeness.
Like much of the ambient music covered in FluxEuropa, this is a work of sound-sculpting drawing on imagination and programming skills rather than a demonstration of virtuoso musicianship, but I have no argument with that.
From the Funprox webzine (Holland)
This is the first release on Cyclic Law, a promising label from Montreal. Their mission statement: "We will strive to release obscure quality music and will also emphasize on unconventional packaging." Well, this debut album has directly succeeded. Instincts / Bustum is a collaboration of Instincts, a dark ambient project of Frédéric Arbour, and visual artist Yvan Arseneault, aka Bustum. This combination of aural and visual arts really works well. The album comes in a fine looking A5 sleeve. The package also contains no less than 15 great duotone cards designed by Arseneault. You can find some previews here. The images are very dark and apocalyptic, which suits the music perfectly."The Mystery Visions" contains 10 long untitled tracks. A dark ambient sound is combined with majestic neo-classical and a few folky elements. The music is a nice mixture of acoustic and electronic means. The atmosphere is solemn and somber, but not very dark, but more melancholic and emotional. The first piece features acoustic guitars, church bells and nice melodic layers. It has a hypnotizing effect. At times the music gets a little more martial, like with the fifth track, which reminds me of the likes of Turbund Sturmwerk. My personal favourite must be the epic second song, which really is overwhelming with all its tension.
A fabulous debut, which enchants you for almost an hour...

From the Seküencias de culto 'zine (Spain)
This is to be listened when everything loses its conceived sense, when your imagination reaches its borders and all created, material or immaterial, gain completely new forms. This new forms are a free combination within your mind which shapes the required images in an endless process. You can add concrete colours and transform reality with no limitations. This is a very general approach to a joint project that unites images and sounds with a taste for the exquisite, unique and unrepeatable. "The Mystery Visions" is the creation of two Canadians, the musical part is by a new and more than promising project under the name of Instincts, and the visual is the fascinating and imaginative creation of Bustum; both have gathered efforts and have fully succeeded in their aim to offer a masterpiece. The CD comes in a luxury presentation, a fold out packaging that surprises for its high quality and its beautiful elections of colours. Also the logos and fonts are really elegantly designed and used, while inside we find a place for the CD and the visual works that come in fifteen cards, also with a top quality brown colour election. But we should start first by describing how this work is musically and at the end we will make a little approach to the visual counterpart. Instincts music surprised me since the very first listening, Frédéric Arbour, the man behind this moniker, have created an album that really make me think that not only the great masters of these styles are able to achieve great results, but newcomers are sometimes also capable of masterpieces of this magnitude. This is an album to listen with a volume turned up to appreciate the strong effects it produces and also the strength of the compositions from the inner to the more noticeable elements. Frédéric not only compose with great talent and proper ideas which are the main reason of my high consideration, but also obtains something not to easy to find nowadays in these music fields. Many projects try to copy or obtain a similar sound and are easily and rapidly labelled, while Instincts joins certain influences, that I would define better as inspirations, to build a very own style with defined characteristics that impact the listener from the beginning; this may be more easily to explain but further more difficult to obtain. This is an album with an important variety of sound inclinations but that, at the same time, follows a line which I could define as a total presentation of the most isolated and desolated landscapes. This is a true wilderness of ruins, places visited and revisited in eternal distress and misfortune represented by the way the composer treats his instrumentation. He managed every instant to place the listener in a state of anguish and really wanting for more, for more obsessive ambience that literally penetrates and lurks inside the brain. Tracks are untitled and the first is the initial state of really eternal sadness brought by the bells sounds, this initial composition brings also a slow acoustic guitar and far drums together with an epic and apocalyptic style that will be the essence of an important part of the recording. The instrumentation is sometimes supported by a vibrating background that resonates and echoes in your mind, and one important aspect is that the whole is frequently adorned with melodies that also complete an oppressive situation. The songs, besides bringing long passages, offer interesting structures reaching its highlights with the presence of really dark melodies. The scene gains new purposes with the entrance of the second, an atmosphere of victory and defeat are mingled with the epic of what we can define as trumpets like sounds, later, the different desperate forms bring more tension since all sounds seem to perish after their respective intervention. Within the third track there is also a place for droning atmospheres that invades with an immense solitude, a misleading tranquillity, that what really represents are unending journeys through dangerous and unknown wastelands accompanied by melodies as soft as sinister. Blurred images are usually witnessed, combined with a terrible smoke that drags itself over the untouched surface and an apocalyptic sensation, not abandoning the permanent state of decadence; this was the fourth track, where in spite of a doomed situation there is also room for extreme beauty. Now follows a composition that represents perfectly the martial side of the project due to the use of percussions and recorded sequences of proclaimed victory. This fifth adventure also shows again some epic touch and of course contains the gloomy atmospheres that are undoubtedly essential during the whole album. The next two tracks are also perfect examples of what Instincts wants to offer, the need to present an immensity that is never simple but vast spaces, where the listener have an eternal sensation of despair. Sometimes a cyclic idea is offered with the repetition of sounds that get us closer to the concept of the eternal and interminable, but also this idea is conceived under the form of melodies with a neo classical touch of the most obscure kind. It can be a torturing experience, in the best sense of the word, when listen to this album repeatedly, since there are certain sounds that seem to be repeated in your mind even after the album has reached its end, at least this is a sensation I get when I have listened to this work in a very attentive manner. Another clear example is the eighth track, combining elements that had already been presented in past compositions but reaching other levels of grandiose and strong beauty, and insisting with ominous melodies and extremely charged atmospheres not altering the state of things created during previous minutes. The next brings a concurrence of both extensive and concrete melodies that unite the layers of backing sounds in a whole, approaching the listener to even more extensive paths. The end arrives with predominant drums, while the ultimate bells and synth melodies resound in the air with grandeur. Bells seem to show a tiring march, a final celebration with a delicate and lonely intervention at the end of this amazing album, a final preach for a future and new dawn. Among the fifteen postcards that belong to the visual part of this work we find the first three as also the creation of the musician behind Instincts. They deal with a very interesting way of treating the images, mainly naked trees with half blurred treatment that partly may represent the arid aspect of the music itself.  The work of Bustum is also a very nice visual experience. The artist, with the beautiful election of the duotone, builds imaginative collages that unites chaos and order, a variety of images perfectly combined to create a story behind each card. They reflect a mix of mystic images, created icons, with a smell of apocalypse and death. In many of the collages he creates a situation around a fixed center that seems to be the basic point to which depends the rest of the visual composition. Some collages bring to mind a sensation of huge contrast between earthly misfortunes and promised spiritual higher existence.  Well, really many interpretations can be deduced through the attentive contemplation of each postcard, but I do really recommend the listener and observer to acquire this more than recommended work of art, undoubtedly, and according to my own opinion, one of the best editions that I have the chance to listen and contemplate during the last years. Really hoping for more.  F. Paco Gonzalez.

 From the Above the ruins web'zine (Holland)
This very special release by the new Canadian label called Cyclic law is a collaboration between the musician Instincts (Frédéric Arbour) and Bustum who is a graphic designer.With the music and photographs of Frédéric and the design work of Bustum we get a very nice blend of neo-classical/dark-ambient artwork. The package contains 15 duo-toned postcards with the photowork of Instincts which have bin re-worked by Bustum. Musically you get a sort of mix of Really dark-ambient, sometimes reminding me of Herbst 9 a little and Neo-Classical in the style of Derniere Volonte or Turbund Sturmwerk.Very good and very "Relaxing".....TIP! Peter S.

 From Nuit et Brouillard (France)
Ultra dark atmospheric soundscapes with neo-classical arrangements and samples voices, reminds us at times of the darkest DEATH IN JUNE and also of the early DERNIERE VOLONTE. Comes in a highly luxurious A5 cover + 15 duo-tone inserts. Recommended!.

From the Heimdallr web'zine (France)
Instincts (the solo project of Frédéric Arbour) debut album "The Mystery Visions" is a musical and visual collaboration with the graphic artist Bustum. It is presented in a lavish fold out cover containing the CD and fifteen duotone cards of collages from Bustum and photographs by Frédéric Arbour, that provide an ideal visual support to the music. Instincts uses machines, acoustic guitars and percussions to create dark and eerie soundscapes that combine dark ambient and neoclassic elements. It is impossible to make one track stand out, as each track is equally important to the progression of the album that takes the auditor through a range of varied emotions, which, nonetheless, remain within the realm of a cold and timeless desolation...A very interesting project. Ian C.April 2002
From Malignant Records (USA)
Instincts-The Mystery Visions CD, Hard to talk about this without first mentioning the packaging absolutely gorgeous fold out cover packet with elaborately designed 5x7" duotone cards numbering 15 in total. Produced in collaboration with Bustum Press, it is a release of both musical and visual artistry. Musically, Instincts designs somber and gloomy pieces blending dark ambience with neo-classical arrangments. Evolves with an epic grace and noble sadness, all the while retaining an oppressively dark and martial feel. A welcome new project from Canada that will find immediate appeal to fans of Heid, Caul, Les Joyaux de la Princesse and the like. (Cyclic Law)
 
From the Twilight Zone web'zine (Italy)
The Mistery Visions. Judgement's bells bring on the neck this Apocalypse's rosary. And frozen winds of an impenetrable and inevitable decadency arrive, so Instincts hurls his extreme recall made of the lividest consternation and the darkest presages. Spotted parchements by the time recognize oblivion's places, comfortable deserts as the last shelter before leaving forever the reality. A look of perdiction manufactured by ritualistic, neoclassical and dark-ambient atmospheres, magically inspired, imposing in crossing evry unknown and undesired entity. Obscure enchantment which comes from keyboards, sideral lament and minimal corrosion cross through visceral accords and afflicted sonar landscape; tumultuous crowds hurl an angry screaming. The inesorable perception of the end overcomes composer's soul, illuminated humbled deep and fantastic darkambient walking. Heavy bells tolls describe every rare instant. For who has esperimented Desiderii Marginis it will be a pleased discovery to enter inside these sounds, beside track five sink in a war march which refers to Von Thronstahl. A delirium's completion without return, a regal packet with visionary composition's 15 wonderfull imagines, desolate places which show the face of who exales the last prayer, the last propitiatory rite, the last flight to the abyss, the last astonished look. It has only to present this abandon's huge blanket. "A pain and Death's fanfare precedes the advent of ravens..."