Kindred Spirits gave Milwaukee doom metal merchants Arctic Sleep a triumphant 2019. That concept album centered around bandleader Keith D., processing his pet’s death. The one-man act’s latest project, Derelict: A Homemade Acoustic Retrospective, draws inspiration from a more universal experience: the COVID quarantine. By trading out the pummeling tones of guitars stoked with feedback for the gentler, yet firmly strummed and plucked, sounds of an instrument sans amplification, D. accentuates the essential mellowness of a half-dozen songs from Arctic Sleep’s back catalog.
Those six songs run no less than five minutes and can exceed eight; it makes Derelict a generous gift from D.’s Bandcamp page to fans seeking artistic solace from some sounds and lyrics that evoke cosmic hope and pastoral serenity.
