album A Far Cry From Here has morphed into a fluid mystical beast called Dark Folke. Most songs have no drums on them. But there is rhythm. Only the type of rhythm associated with an invisible pulse. An implied rhythm. 5 folks sitting around a fire. A metaphorical fire. Chanting for the rain to come." "Moving away from the melodious constraints of song," Ang Song Ming writes in his review, "Dark Folke veers towards ambience – an almost asphyxiating kind", calling it the band's Kid A. Noah Berlatsky remarked in Metro Pulse on the album's combination of freak folk, drony psychedelia and near-metal. Christopher Lim of The Business Times called Dark Folke "A rich sonic feast.. a diving pool that begs to have its depths plumbed", while Christopher Toh of Today awarded the album 4 out of 5, writing that "Album No 4 for The Observatory is a great excursion into what making music in Scandinavia in the wintertime sounds like...the album is wonderfully hypnotic." The CD album is a hardbound book, designed and drawn by metal/hardcore/underground illustrator and designer, Justin Bartlett, the artist behind the art of Sunn O))), Moss, Aura Noir and more. Dark Folke was also released on double vinyl. A music video for "Mind Roots", directed by Ler Jiyuan, was also released. In the lead-up to the release of Dark Folke, The Observatory collaborated with filmmaker Ho Tzu Nyen and theatre director Kok Heng Leun on Invisible Room, a multimedia work for the Singapore Arts Festival featuring the band performing in an 'inverted' music space. "Invisible Room" is also the title of a Dark Folke song. Catacombs Released: April 2012 Produced by Jørgen Træen and The Observatory Recorded and Mixed by Jorgen Traeen Mastered by James Plotkin Design by Keith Utech Art by Thomas Hooper Offset, Letterpress Printing and Bindery by Stumptown Printers The Observatory's fifth album, Catacombs, is described by the band as containing "a more primal, new dark wave sound...[a] study in delusion, insanity and obsession [that] provokes and inspires in a deeply enigmatic way. Even at its coldest and most abstract, it is human to the core." Writing that "The Observatory have outdone themselves this time", X' Ho reviewed Catacombs by declaring, "Someday in the future, some pop historian is gonna look back and say – Catacombs marks the beginning of a new horizon in local music for the sheer fact that waywardness