Today marks the release of the latest drone excursion from NY-based experimentalist Ken Wohlrob. It’s the fourth solo track Wohlrob has released since mid-2024, and it follows a meditative line through cycles of repetition that flesh out and become more immersive across the song’s 11 and a half minutes. If you feel like it’s listening back, I don’t think that’s wrong.

We’ve talked about this before, the notion of extremity as applies to music that isn’t blastbeaten drums and madcap tempos. I don’t know how it is in your brain, but for me, it can be harder sometimes to find space for yourself in stillness. The challenge isn’t to sprint alongside voluminous careening, but to focus in a different way and be open to the procession as it happens. That is, to go with it, really.

So I do consider Wohlrob‘s work — and he’s hardly the only guy with a guitar out there feeling where the drones take him, but he does present his solo work (as opposed to his bands: End of Hope, Northern Heretic, formerly Eternal Black) in a narrative context that enriches it, as you can see below — to be an extreme form, if not extreme metal. And neither will I be the guy on the internet who tells you that the song comprised of an 11-minute single guitar progression built around texturally as it goes is in no way self-indulgent. Of course it is. The exploration is part of the point, and it’s inherently inward. If you can’t get on board with it, well, you’re not alone. I think that’s why they don’t use this stuff in commercials.

If it had drums, “William” might recall some of Earth‘s vaster ‘scaping, but the method here is the key, the way the piece was constructed to unfold as it does. It’s a build, if you want to be technical about it, but there’s nothing at any point in the 11:36 that’s going to pull you out of it if you can get in, and I’m not saying that to be gatekeepy, or a prick, or as some kind of backhanded takedown of the song, I’m just acknowledging that it’s a challenging work. For me too, with my murdered-by-phone attention span and general distractibility.

It’s also worth the effort of listening, really hearing where another line comes in, or how the residual echo becomes the backdrop. There’s a stark strum you can see on the Soundcloud waveform below, at about 1:17 in, but the fluidity has already taken hold by then, and it sure feels good to take a breath and drift alongside.

Enjoy:

Ken Wohlrob, “William” premiere

Ken Wohlrob on “William”:

“William” was a confounding son of a bitch. I wanted it to be more. So I kept throwing different layers at it. But none of them worked. What was there was all it wanted. And the more I listened to it, the more it reminded me of William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops. Basisnki could’ve done so much more with those decaying tape loops. But he was confident enough as an artist to listen to what the music was telling him. It didn’t need more. There was such a journey in those slowly decaying repetitions. To smother them in other things would’ve dragged them down.

What I had was a single take of a repetitive guitar riff, played live through a reverse-echo feedback loop for 11 minutes. The feedback loop created oscillations and repetitions that took on a life of their own, extending past the riff, even re-absorbing it. There was a compelling journey in that single guitar line.

The soundscape is named after Basinski since he inspired the approach and after my father, who is also named William, because he’s had an interesting journey himself. Give it a spin and see where it takes you.

Available at: https://obsidianskyrecords.bandcamp.com/track/william

Released December 5, 2025
Performed and produced by Ken Wohlrob
Recorded at Quatre Cagne, Mohegan Lake, NY
March and October 2025
Cover Image by Melissa Pracht
Obsidian Sky Records #012 © 2025

Ken Wohlrob Linktr.ee

Ken Wohlrob on Instagram

Ken Wohlrob on Soundcloud

Obsidian Sky Records on Bandcamp

If you only know New York’s Ken Wohlrob from his work in doom crunchers Eternal Black or projects like Northern Heretic and the hardcore-minded End of Hope or the pandemic-born Swarm of Flies, “Variac” is likely going to seem pretty far out from all of that, but the guitarist’s second solo single behind this Spring’s “Simulacrum” (posted here) follows suit with the guitar-based drone methodology proffered in that track. I get a distinctly Tribes of Neurot impression from the near-seven-minute “Variac” — some of the violin-aimed effects and guitar-in-vacuum feel remind me of Grace, but can certainly be related to any according number of ambient works — but no question Wohlrob is exploring the form, and the result of his work is an evocative and immersive standalone piece.

I asked Wohlrob after “Simulacrum” whether these songs were leading to an album and the answer I got rounded out to a solid “maybe.” Fair enough. Of course, if the material in question hit a nerve with listeners and the demand was made, I don’t imagine there’d be much argument about putting out an LP, but such ethereal sounds are a form of extremity in music and so almost always have a limited reach, so I wouldn’t bank on that. It’s up to him, then, and probably part of the whether-or-not will come down to how the songs flow when there are enough of them to comprise an LP. We’ll see when we get there, and there’s a ways to go.

But for now, this track is out today through various streaming outlets, and I’ve got both singles at the bottom of this post for those feeling low-key bold enough to take them on. If that’s you, enjoy:

KEN WOHLROB – “Variac”

niku-zuki-no-men (肉付きの面, mask with flesh attached)

Our brains are a strange lockbox. What we choose to keep in there is inexplicable. I was watching Kaneto Shindō’s Onibaba. The soundtrack by Hikaru Hayashi utilizes a sharp sound to heighten the tension, possibly a bow being drawn rapidly across a violin or viola for a quick instant, especially when a character appears wearing the demon-like Hannya mask. The velocity of that single note was strangely compelling. It stuck, much like the flesh to the mask in the film. I don’t know why. But at odd moments it would rise up from my subconscious. I would hear that high-velocity note. And I would see the mask from the film…

“Variac” started with that sound. Or rather, creating my own version of it. Can we be haunted by a musical sound?

But like all the soundscapes I’m creating, it grew into something else…

Memories are not like movies. They don’t have story beats. Or a three-act structure. They’re more fluid. One bleeding into the next with no rhyme nor reason. Layer upon layer triggered by the devil knows what. Ever found yourself saying, “It’s weird, but I just thinking about…”?

I can’t tell you what you should feel when listening to “Variac.” It’s probably going to be different because I haven’t lived your life. And I don’t know what you’ve got tucked away in the subconscious behind the mask.

releases August 23, 2024
Performed and produced by Ken Wohlrob
Recorded at Quatre Cagne, Mohegan Lake, NY
June-July 2024
Obsidian Sky Records #010

https://www.instagram.com/kenwohlrob/
https://soundcloud.com/kwohlrob/
linktr.ee/kwohlrob

To my knowledge, “Simulacrum” is the first single that New York’s Ken Wohlrob — known for his work in defunct doomers Eternal Black as well as the hardcore-minded End of Hope, the pandemic-era remote project Swarm of Flies and the nascent riffery of Northern Heretic‘s two-to-date singles (posted here and here) — has issued under his own name.

Released today through Bandcamp and probably a bunch of other scattered digital outlets, “Simulacrum” swells from its initial fade-in to a six-plus-minute procession of melodic guitar drone, neither minimal in construction or dispassionate as that kind of thing sometimes can be. And while the release info I’ve cut and pasted below is somewhat abstract, so is the song, and that I assume is part of the (friggin’) point. More aural sculpture than soundscape, it howls around synthesizer complement and leaves no shortage of room for the listener to get lost in its contemplative spaces, but has a defined course and forward progression in addition to offering something different from anything any of Wohlrob‘s bands have done before. I take the fact that “Simulacrum” makes me curious about both it — how many layers of guitar/keys are there, which layer was built on first, how long did it take for it to be recorded, when did it feel done and why, on and on — and about what’s to come from Wohlrob as good signs.

Maybe you’ll feel the same, but there’s only one way to find out. Take a pause to open your mind and focus your attention, then hit play and enjoy:

KEN WOHLROB – “Simulacrum”

A song can be a slippery thing.
It can have no structure while still being bound to consistency.
It can be sinister, but also beautiful.
It can allow you space to think, moving into the background, but it can still enforce its presence.
It can feel immovable, while it can feel as if it’s slithering away, unable to be held.
Its components can be distinct, while its layers can melt into one another.
It can sound familiar, yet unlike anything you’ve ever heard.
It can have roots, but be unmoored from the past.
It can borrow, cheat, and steal, while being pure and unique.
It is a sum of its parts, but the parts don’t define it.
It can engage the brain, but defy understanding.
It can be one thing one minute, another thing the next
But it should infect you…

Otherwise, what’s the friggin’ point?

There are guitars. They are synthesizers. They are effects. Slivers of old songs and styles that have been lurking in my brain, sitting in the unconscious, waiting to be deployed. Some influences overt, others indistinguishable. This was where my brain was at during the moments the song was recorded. It was not planned. Nor written. It was cobbled together from rapid impulses and dredged old thoughts.

Hope you dig it.

releases May 3, 2024
Written, performed and produced by Ken Wohlrob
Recorded at Quatre Cagne, Mohegan Lake, NY
February 2024
Obsidian Sky Records #009

https://www.instagram.com/kenwohlrob/
https://soundcloud.com/kwohlrob/
linktr.ee/kwohlrob