Arcturus - Disguised Masters (1999)

What way to better champion your newfound eclecticism than the obligatory 'remix' album? Disguised Masters is not built entirely of such distractions, but much of its playtime is devoted to versions of tracks off La Masquerade Infernale injected with drum & bass, industrial, looping, and other electronic mediums that were so popular throughout the 90s. On one hand, their material lends itself well enough to casting the widest net possible, it's not as if they hadn't (and wouldn't) incorporate this stuff straight onto their originals, but unfortunately this record suffers where many of its kind do...just because you 'can', doesn't mean you 'should', and the practice rarely translates into anything justifiable or memorable enough here that I've ever wanted to spin back through it. That's not to say this is some immature, amateur bout with the techniques, but just not very impactful even if you're compelled by the idea of such already gonzo tracks being reshuffled into some fractured dancehall of the imagination.

I suppose the two new originals here would provide the biggest carrot on its stick, but the intro "White Tie Black Noise" is just a swell of ambiance that ties into "Deception Genesis", a track that admittedly does feel like a B-side off La Masquerade, with a sort of progressive dark trip hop vibe which wouldn't have been out of place on Ulver's electronic records. In fact if you just line up the timing, this seems like it was Rygg's headspace for most of his projects, and it could just as easily fall under the catalogue of one as the other. There is a bit of mystique to this one, I like the bass grooves, the little sweeps of strings and the creepy narrated vocals, plus you get a little guitar in its depths. The odd re-imagining of "Du Nordavind" is also pretty interesting, a more frightening, noisy carnival version from the older album. Beyond this, though, I found very little consistency in the remixes. The 'G. Wolf Levitation Mix' of "Painted by Horror" has some nice, clunking percussion and eeriness about its dark ambient thrums, but it just never adds up to much after the first few moments. There's an ensemble/classical re-recording of "Ad Astra" which is also quite soothing, where the 'Magenta Experience' remix is just kinda cheesy beats being layered onto it.

I do think that the hybridization of forms here, like neo-classical ambient to jungle was pretty novel for this period, but it might have been better served for another project of perhaps a full-length where it was used more in new originals than chunks of earlier songs. It's pretty clear that Arcturus got the hint, since they implemented similar ideas so tastefully and sparingly into the full-length after this, but as it stands, Disguised Masters is a not-unpleasant but unnecessary excursion into the collective mindset of a band already on the fringe of its genre, trying to transmogrify onto the fringes of other adjacent sounds that were fomenting in the same era. Lots of good individual beats and grooves, little direction. The low point in their canon, but not irredeemably so.

Verdict: Indifference [6.25/10]

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