What all great ambient albums have in common is that they are still music — despite being more atmospheric noise than proper, progressive compositions, they still have an element of musicians playing instruments.

This aspect is the cornerstone of what makes Gog’s Mist From the Random More one of the best black ambient recordings ever. Not creepy, synthesized MIDI programmings or edited sound samples, but miked-up, organic instruments played in time with each other. It is precisely the quality of the recording, the clarity, the very way it feels organic to the point of drawing breath, that makes this album so compelling.

But calling Mist From the Random More "ambient" might be misleading. There are definite chord progressions and lumbering grooves throughout much of the album’s 3-track, 39-minute length, but you might not notice so much because of the wall-of-sound / electronic noise that accompanies the metered elements.

Then again, calling Mist From the Random More "black" might be misleading as well. At first, we pegged this project as ambient black metal, but too much of the compositional aspect of Gog says that’s a poor categorization.

What you will get on this 3-track, near-40-minute album is a spectrum of sounds from a dark, electric orchestra tuning up, to the grooving, psychedelic swaths of a trio of musicians playing in the same room, off each other and off the air that each’s instruments push in physical space from the interaction, all covered in a shimmering, om-like dissonance. An exquisitely powerful and uncommon album that is in its own right a triumph of sound. (8.9/10)