Limited to 800 copies. UPC: 617308097450 The self-styled ritualistic electro-mechanical ensemble Osmium is a veritable supergroup. Made up of Oscar-winning composer and instrumentalist Hildur Gudnadottir, veteran engineer and producer James Ginzburg, Senyawa's idiosyncratic vocalist Rully Shabara and Grammy-winning sound designer / producer Sam Slater, while each member brings along a laundry list of accolades, the project is far greater than the sum of its parts. Alloying burnished electroacoustic soundscapes with dense, metallic drones, barbed rhythms and buckled, bio-mechanical vocalizations, Osmium's eagerly awaited debut album doesn't try to cast a rigid future. Rather, it tempers a viscous flow of unorthodox speculations that smolders through the distant past, blazing a trail all the way to the frontier of fate. Absorbed by questions about the relationship between humans and technology, tradition and progression, the individual and the group, Osmium channel their experience and expertise into a set of forward-thinking sonic interrogations that skewer established cultural preconceptions. And although genre is acknowledged - the album draws from folk, doom metal, 20th century minimalism, industrial music and extreme noise - there's never a sense that it's riveted firmly in place. Widely known for her soundtrack work (including 'Joker' and 'Chernobyl') Gudnadottir plays the halldorophone, a unique cello-like electroacoustic instrument designed by Halldor Ulfarsson that allows the performer to harness unstable feedback loops. Taking his cues from this process, Slater (who has worked alongside Johann Johannsson, Ben Frost and others) generates rhythms using a self-oscillating drum he designed with Koma Elektronik and Subtext boss and Emptyset member Ginzburg responds in kind, producing booming tambura-like sonorities from a device he developed himself based on the monocord, an ancient single- stringed resonator. Osmium synchronize the three unique instruments using a custom system ...