Lunae firmae — The combined refraction of sunlight and earthlight retains just over ten percent of its radiative properties in the nightside mirror that is the lunar face, not enough to sustain life but more than enough to animate tendrils of growth and eager blooms in its direction. Selenotropism is less a specialization of any one particular genus of plant life so much as it is a broadly applicable characteristic behavior observed and named a hundred and forty years ago per botanist M.C. Musset whose experiments specialized in the adaptive physical movements of plants. Though it might seem somewhat trite to suggest that certain plants naturally follow any celestial source of light radiation in real time, this sort of information is necessarily confirmed and no less useful in the sense that scientific practicum aids in the confirmation of our reality, deepens the definition of sentience and in turn enriches common sense. The knowledge-seeker and the artificer, they who possess intimate understanding of the living world and pursue the broadly applicable mechanisms inherent manifest as some portion of admirable character upheld within the hermetic misanthropic natural philosopher protagonist per the lore of San Francisco, California-borne avant-garde/post-black metal band Botanist, who concerns himself with documenting the seeming supernatural qualities of plant life while holding little regard for the mutated, self-defeating louse-like existence of mankind. Despite the confusing numbering systems available to their discography ‘VIII: Selenotrope‘ is the fifth canonical solo album from the project to date and in many ways picks up where the project had detoured beyond 2014 in terms of voice, having since distanced their sound from the grotesqueries of black metal and embraced the emotional timbre of post-music within their entirely unique instrumentation.

Per the perception of a certain generation of internet-addicted black metal fandom Botanist are a holdout, not a relic but a persistent vision, from a certain era of late 2000’s post-black metal which many not-so affectionately called the popular emergence of the “Bandcamp black metal” era wherein the post-metal and new atmospheric black metal vernacular emergent provided a tabula for avant-garde artists to work with. The curious lo-fi scrawling of Mamaleek, the spiritualist non-conform of Liturgy, the mathematical obstinacy of Jute Gyte, the very pro-level collegiate mind-meld of Krallice and we’d only begin to scratch the surface with projects who’d been considered as gimmickry when they’d presented something viably new, trendy or freshened beyond tradition. Of course these groups are hardly related but there was some implied movement which’d appealed to the outside-looking-in folks curious about the prolific participatory class of black metal sprouting up, most of it hopeful trash at best if we’re being brutally honest. Beyond being the ones that folks were talking about most between 2008-2010, each of the aforementioned bands held some viable claim to music that is aesthetically related to the complete loss of control over the ‘underground’ charges of black metal, the “rules” and legacies of black metal held little water when treated as a tube of paste in a sophisticated amateur musician’s palette. Even if you don’t agree with how I’ve framed the late 2000’s online black metal presence and its bevvy of free-range, independent experimentalism most would agree that the appearance of Botanist was received by the cynical chatroom addicts and Facebook group lifers of the time as gimmickry (“green metal” never landed with the edgier crowd, eh), but it was certainly a musically viable thought which arrived without precedence in its original form and perhaps since.

Knowing the garde before authoring the avant. — Botanist were more than a little bit different the any of the groups I’d lumped them in with in the sense that Bay Area musician and founder Otrebor had fundamentally understood the rhythmic potential of black metal (specifically avant-garde black metal) as a drummer and attempted rhythm-smithy in various formative projects before cutting his teeth in a solo project. Though I wouldn’t say that his 2006 formed black metal project Ophidian Forest, a cross-continental forge of intermittent activity since, was related in any sense one could easily parse a fundamental black metal fandom from the mash-up that was ‘Redbad‘ back in 2007. Botanist wouldn’t form as a focused solo endeavor until 2009 and the initial goal of the band was a strangely acoustic form of music which provided guttural black metal rasped vocals, somewhat challenging extreme metal drum patternation, and all rhythmic generation coming from arrangements written for 2-3 hammered dulcimers which I believe were given some level of distortion from the start. The first two albums (‘I: The Suicide Tree‘ / ‘II: A Rose From the Dead‘, 2011) were interchangeable in their implementation of twenty or so ~2-3 minute songs each, frantically striking at their rhythms in quick yet ineffectual shocks of abrasive and insistently chiming aggression. Not exactly Ved Buens Ende but certainly something nobody had heard before and it came with a charming characterization up front.

All of Botanist‘s releases are narrated from the perspective of The Botanist, a hermetic naturalist character who is essentially a documentarian natural philosopher telling the tales of various plant life within his sanctuary “the Verdant Realm”. Of course there is a misanthropic, nihilistic tilt to this character who’d fantasize about the end of humanity, celebrating the self-deleting nature of the beast. If you aren’t a lyric reader, at this point I really do believe you are better off listening to popular music rather than skating by with a surface level understanding of what extreme metal musicians put into their craft and I say this because part of Botanist‘s appeal beyond their outrageous first couple of releases is the world built within their lore and how it begins to reflect a very “black metal” world view and an original characterization overall. Of course, that said, you’re probably not going to fall for the graces of this band jumping into their first two recordings unless masochism is a larger part of your enjoyment of black metal as there is some needling pain to be absorbed from those very driven, endlessly clanging records. It was ‘III: Doom in Bloom‘ (2012) where the recordings might’ve been just as raw-yet-digitally realized as the first couple but the focus on ~10 minute pieces allowed Otrebor to fully explore the dynamic of this sound beyond the windchime kicking grindcore bursts of the first two chapters. At this point it should be obvious enough that dulcimer driven black metal will ultimately read as piano driven black metal in practicum and this was greatly enhanced by the slower, doomed pace of that second album. At the time it’d struck me with a bit of the cold melodrama of funeral doom metal, a still tiny niche which’d begun to momentarily lose its way in the hands of popular artists at the start of the 2010’s. Elements of jazz fusion-esque beats, dissonance, and depressive black metal helped to make a strong impression at the time in my part but of course they’d steadily improved beyond that point.

If you are one to thrive in the rhythm section, in love with time signatures and artists who are able to play with tempo just as well as they are harmony the real signature and finesse of Botanist might very well arrive between the more measured, emotionally driven distortion of ‘IV: Mandragora‘ (2013) and ‘VI: Flora‘ (2014) wherein this duo of albums for The Flenser acted as the sophistication and serious-faced evolution of the group further away from the confining space of even post-black metal. Botanist‘s third solo album was the one I am still attached to but the fourth is the one which is arguably most related to everything that came next, so, I won’t go through every bit of that beyond the suggestion that expanding into a live setting with a full band yielded three excellent full-lengths (technically five if we consider reworked ‘Ecosystem‘ and a unique version of ‘The Collective‘) which are, in my own opinion, are far evolved beyond the early solo work done by Otrebor who takes on this sixth numbered LP ‘VIII: Selenotrope‘ solo wherein this is the persistent evolution of the artist’s vision and voice. In this sense if you are a holdout fan for ‘VI: Flora‘ and the style it had developed you will find that same spirit and songcraft on this new album without necessarily forgetting about the lush, dramatic experiences in between thanks to a mix/mastering from Dan Swanö, who’d yielded similarly rich results for ‘Photosynthesis‘ back in 2020.

Shhh! Midnight voices, please. — Instead of employing the odd harsh black metal vocals of yesteryear Otrebor provides ASMR worthy whispered verses within many of the pieces on ‘VIII: Selenotrope‘ and this is likely enough to immediately drive away the more self-conscious, discerning black metal fandom who likely weren’t sure what they were getting into to begin with. Clean-sung ethereal chorale (all performed by the artist) in uplift is a big part of Botanist‘s gathering atmosphere at this point and these moments provide harmony, anima for a couple of pieces (“Epidendrum Nocturnum”, “The Flowering Dragon” et al.) and give a rousing sensation to certain songs which otherwise almost entirely feature whispered verses to convey lyrics. While the vocals are an important part of what Botanist does, and the whispering will certainly drive some folks mad, it is the dulcimer and drum interplay that showcase just how much the artist has developed as a performer and composer beyond 2014.

In the same way a composer like Xytras of Samael wrote much of his mid-to-late 90’s work on piano to retain a rhythmically sound, harmony rich skeleton so does the majority of Botanist‘s translation of post-rock, prog-metal, and atmospheric black metal traits to the dulcimer depend upon a tight relationship between a decidedly non-traditional treatment of the instrument with consideration for how that general chromatic rhythmic voicing interacts with tightly writ stylized drumming. The bluster of post-black metal is the framework for these pieces but not in a strict sense. While I don’t doubt many of these songs could be performed on a single dulcimer they are layered in dual voiced harmony which generally follows the lead of the rhythm section in producing typically descending and/or dissonant-in-phrase which evolve with changes in tempo. The resonance of the instrument is grand, again the ancestrally hammered piano that it essentially is should naturally read as piano-driven post-rock in style as repetitive but heavily modulated statements craft ~6-7 minute arcs, plenty of time for rounded and readable rhythms to develop their steaming interest.

For my own taste this produces little lasting interest as ‘VIII: Selenotrope‘ starts, the first two pieces are certainly cloying in their greater shape, “Against the Selenic Light” being effectively tense otherwise, but inspired in their compositional read, appreciably performed with a confident voice. It isn’t until “Epidendrum Nocturnum” arrives that the dual voicing produces its first challenging phrase, a shorter ethereal gust with a bit of a forlorn hand when transitioning between the dulcimer lead introduction and the choral sections that follow. This sense that the bard in the forest has a bit of an indie rock touch to his work is surreal, almost on the nose as “Mirabilis” hums past next and I suppose the whole first half of the record feels very light, breezing past without quite enough texture beyond the opener for my interest. As the timbre of the vocals lightens and “Angels Trumpet” softens the mood even further with a nigh psychedelic hum the general voice of the record has been well communicated, its first few chapters being a deep and seeming joyful breath taken in the night air. This was initially less interesting than the last three pieces on the record for my taste yet effectively contrasting in terms of energetic delivery.

The wholly instrumental, drum void transition into the third act by way of title track “Selenotrope” is generally where ‘VIII: Selenotrope‘ catches my attention most and only briefly holds it within the strong rhythmic station of “Sword of the Night” after that, it being the major standout moment for my taste before the final ~15 minute closer. Much as it would make sense to go into the details of these pieces and parse just exactly why they are effective beyond post-rock’s rhythmic tropes I’d found it made more sense to appreciate just how impractically sophisticated and detailed the work of Botanist manages to be despite the somewhat accessible result, there are certainly simpler ‘easier’ paths to these rhythms yet the logical takeaway is that the mode of instrumentation and the process itself remains the signature of the project more than the melodic engagement available; Despite wanting something as dark as ‘III: Doom in Bloom‘ in this level of a high fidelity render I did eventually appreciate the unique lilt of ‘VIII: Selenotrope‘ as a complete thought, an exploration of the lighter post-metal voicing touched upon within the Collective records while still relevant to the style of the earlier Botanist solo albums which narrowly escapes a wholly whimsical, or, overly sentimental voice. With time and a bit of repetition I’d eventually found the first three pieces alongside “Selenotrope” b/w “Sword of the Night” were all strong enough to warrant some level of a recommendation to the established fandom. A moderately high recommendation.

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