Bolt Ruin - False Awakening Loops (2023)

Cling on to dear hope when entering the world of BOLT RUIN (he/him). His second installment on the Infinite Machine label scores his parasomniac dreams with an unsettling ambient soundtrack of sheer apocalyptic beauty. On a new release dubbed ‘False Awakening Loops’ the Belgian producer delivers an ethereal synth-heavy score to a non-existing motion picture film, where the borders between reality, multiple dreams and flashbacks of the protagonist are unclear. The concept of the record is rooted in BOLT RUIN’s personal experience with episodes of parasomnia, a catch-all term for unusual events while asleep, like nested dreams and sleep paralysis.

The follow-up to ‘Ehkta’ (Infinite Machine, 2022) sees BOLT RUIN reasserting himself as a crafter of cinematic landscapes with a singular voice. Continuing to explore the eerie waves of drone-infused electronics, he fearlessly interweaves cinematic sound palettes, distorted field recordings, twisted industrial rhythms and crunching textures that come crashing down. Bound by depth in sound design, the EP contains six sonic equivalents of a loop dream, each envisioning a state of limbo where hope seems lost at first glance. But even in the most ominous of places, light is to be found.

At the core of this record lies BOLT RUIN’s personal experience with nested dreams and sleep paralysis. ‘False Awakening Loops’ is intended as the score to the mental dream images that linger in his mind as a forgotten script. Only an old monochrome photograph of a child on a wooden raft (see artwork by Bavo Hendrickx) serves as a rare physical trace to this parallel dream world. From here on, brief excerpts of scenes are what we have at our disposal: a protagonist is enchanted by alluring voices in a deserted forest and interrupts a ceremonial rite (Aevoid), doors follow each other one after the other in an endlessly looping dream (Ehkt), the blinding beams of a desolate lighthouse causes one to fall of a cliff (Phaer ft. Amenra collaborator and double bass player Innerwoud), a dilapidated mansion pushes one to question your own sanity (Wrekth) and an isolated cabin sailboat at a restless sea while indistinct sounds are creeping closer (Aerhk)… These are the eerie settings of the dreams that plague the main character of ‘False Awakening Loops’. With such scenery in mind, the visionary compositions of BOLT RUIN deliver a new take on the horror score genre in an original and contemporary way.