Ye Gods
The Arcane & Paranormal Earth
self-released
Antoni Maiovvi has operated under many musical guises since his emergence in the late 2000s as one of the pillars of the italo disco revival. Amongst his numerous projects, the last several years have seen the UK-born, US-based artist working as Jason Priest, an alias for his tuneful post-punk material, Pleasure Model for his conceptual techno works, and as Ye Gods, an outlet for ambient ritual electronics. Distinct from Maiovvi’s other endeavours, the material on The Arcane & Paranormal Earth is meditative and trancelike, with subtly articulated layers of noise, synths and hypnotic percussion that produce both dreamy detachment and conscious stimulation.
Maiovvi states in the liners for the album that Ye Gods is him at his most sincere and least veiled as a artist, and despite the record’s abstract nature that holds true in the listening; while certainly esoteric in nature, these ambient and occasionally glitchy compositions do have a real directness, always materially present and never fully inscrutable. Like Coil circa Musick to Play in the Dark (one of the closest points of comparison musically), and as suggested by the title of the album, the arcane is kept in balance with earthly concerns. Hence, although opener “Darashim” is made up of intersecting layers of static, rising drones and a simple repeating rhythm loop, you have Maiovvi’s voice repeating “Let the light pour from your skull” in mantra-like fashion, varying slightly in delivery to anchor it and offset its abstraction.
It’s not just the vocalizations that maintain the balance between the transcendental and somatic sides of these records, but the actual construction of the numbers themselves. “Aksum” foregoes any kind of identifiable percussion and rhythm for pure textures, but the static that shapes the song’s structure provides a tangible means to navigate its vast reverbs and distant pads, the feedback recalling the measurable and predictable qualities of pure sound as an instrument unto itself. Similarly, the sinister whispers of “Of Venus & Adonis” and its hissy, liquid percussion are accompanied by almost imperceptible snatches of bubbly programming that subconsciously connect its unfolding and twisting electronics, reinforcing Maiovvi’s repeated question “Of what substance are you made?”, and rendering it non-rhetorical.
If all this sounds a touch metaphysical, well, it’s a record that deliberately addresses the very human experience of interacting with the intangible from the corporeal world. The success of The Arcane & the Paranormal Earth lies in how it involves the listener in that discourse, and while it’s certainly rooted in Maiovvi’s own interactions with those broad concepts, it has an ease of listening that keeps it stimulating through repeated listens in and out of order. Apparently the first of three comparable releases from Ye Gods in 2025, it’s a foundational release that establishes a vast landscape of musical ideas to explore, and the ways innumerable ways we can engage with them.
