It ‘s been a very short time since I found myself extolling that masterpiece of melancholy made music entitled Departe and here I am again struggling with a new release marked Clouds, the result of the tireless creativity of Daniel Neagoe. Never has such prolificacy been more welcome, since the level of pathos remains very high even in this release entitled Destin, which, being an ep, consists not only of unreleased tracks but also reissues of others already released previously. What matters, of course, are the four new tracks, each of them recorded with the contribution of a different guest on the voice capable of making more and more peculiar and at the same time complete the work of this super group of atmospheric doom. In The Wind Carried Your Soul we find the angelic voice of Ana Carolina of the Chilean The Mourning Sun (of which I highly recommend, to those who do not know, the splendid Último Exhalario) duet with Daniel, creating a magical vocal alchemy and enhanced by a melodic substrate of rare beauty; the following Fields of Nothingness is played by Mikko Kotamäki (Swallow The Sun, just for those who happened to come here by mistake), always able to give back every song in which he is the protagonist at the maximum of its evocative potential, which happens also with this magnificent song that reminds for its structure the one played by Pim Blankenstein in Departe (Driftwood). In Nothing But A Name the vocal part is entrusted to Mihu, frontman of the lesser known Romanian band Abigail, whose timbre is quite similar to Daniel’s: here the difference is a sorrowful melody outlined by the piano and a guitar that has more solo space than usual; the fourth and last unreleased track, In This Empty Room, is the most surprising, especially because it allows us to discover a great performer like the Greek singer Gogo Melone (Aeonian Sorrow), who has a versatile and very personal voice: the duet with Neagoe’s growl takes the sound to different shores than the more usual Clouds, giving it a less gloomy aspect, although always imbued with melancholy. Destin in his downward phase presents acoustic versions of You Went So Silent and Even If I Fall (both from Doliu), which in this guise lose some of their dramatic pathos but highlight how Daniel has become a magnificent performer even when grappling with clean vocals alone, and the re-release of the single Errata, released in 2015 in the interval between the two full lengths, which proves to be a good episode without reaching the peaks of most of the Clouds’ production. Overall, the four unreleased tracks make Destin another milestone for atmospheric doom, making this project, changing in several of its protagonists but always firmly in the hands of the Romanian musician’s talent, a frequent as well as unmissable appointment for those who love these sounds.
2017 – The Vinyl Division 2021 – Personal Records
Mournful Sounds 
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