Reza Solatipour The GateEighth Tower Records (CD/CS/DL) Italy’s Raffaele Pezzella has slowly and methodically been making a name for himself in the experimental world. His labels Unexplained Sounds and its off-shoot, the more ambient focused Eighth Tower, have been issuing experimental fringe music, nearing cult like status in avant circles. Pezzella in recent years has […]
Rites of Fall | Towards the Blackest SkiesLeidforschung (LP/DL) The latest from Warsaw-based solo project Rites of Fall is Towards the Blackest Skies, and its both harmonic and edgy in its dark passages and little nuances brought by guest performers: Jan Wierzbicki (double bass) on the opener Afterflesh. Elsewhere on the record you can also […]
Post Scriptvm | Variola VeraTesco Organisation (LP/DL) Since the late 80’s Tesco Organisation has been releasing music with an edge. This is the first time I’ve seen one of their releases hit my desk, this by Post Scriptvm, the Russian-American act that has been at it since the late 90s. This is their eleventh full-length […]
Erik Levander | InåtForwind (CD/DL) Swede Erik Levender presents Inåt (translation: Inwards). Listeners have about thirty seconds to self-reflect before being pummeled with a devastating drop. The synth-tones like wire; meshed together to form uneasy quakes. High-pitched frequencies counter-weight luridly grim moments of de facto doom. The cover art (Katharina Ira Allenberg) suggests a stoney self-examination; the […]
The below recordings are some recent surprises that afforded more than a first run-thru, which is fairly typical when engaged with as much sound as we are these days – and I am not complaining! Though through some rhyme, reason or rhythm these particular selections made it back into the cycle, so I thought to […]
Swine | Blood MonthMuteant Sounds (DL) Terrific drawn out swells, like the wake of a slow-cruising barge or a very large school of marine life, epitomize Blood Month by Swine. Aquatic lurking hisses and gurgles form the eerie ambiances produced by the unique instrumentation within this album. One can recognize the sax (Tim Hill) presence […]
Gareth Davis + Duane Pitre | Nótt Midira (CD/DL) Not too long ago we had sung the virtues of clarinettist Gareth Davis while talking about Elliott Sharp’s Plastový Hrad. That bass clarinet is now thrown in a totally different context, one created by a continuous electronic drone. The engenderer of the latter – Duane Pitre […]
Tapes and Topographies | Ubiquitous CloudsSimulacra (CD/DL) On the rare full-moon Friday the 13th of September 2019 Tapes and Topographies released their lucky seventh album care of Simulacra Records. Long-diminishing echoes pulse to give the title track a radar-like current. Confident yet tender key strokes illuminate the soft drone as silvery lining. From the get-go, […]
øjeRum | Without Blood The Sun Darkens Cyclic Law (CD/DL) Paw Grabowski presents an incredible limbed (wings and arms) analog collage to contemplate over the course of Without Blood the Sun Darkens, under his moniker øjeRum. The run time, just under an hour, provides a cryptic expanse within which to lose the outside world – […]
Hüma Utku | GnosisKarlrecords (LP/DL) “Pilgrimage chronicles, transmuted into mesmerizing sounds” Hüma Utku is an electronic composer hailing from Istanbul, Turkey and currently based in Berlin, Germany. Her work involves exploring the possibilities of how sound textures and rhythm can be used to evoke a sense of ancient within abstract electronics. Having released material under […]
Various Artists | Veronica Moser Presents: Neurodiversity Fight Back! Ho.Gravi.Malattie (CS/DL) “A manifesto of neurodiversity fighting back” Any release bearing a thought-provoking title catches the attention and my interest automatically kicks in. Veronica Moser Presents: Neurodiversity Fight Back!, is a conceptually charged, researching attempt, where artists were invited to explore the concept with their distinctive […]
Moloch Conspiracy | BaclouEighth Tower Records (CD/DL) Recorded on a trip to French Guiana this is Moloch Conspiracy‘s follow-up to last year’s The Cave of Metaphysical Darkness & Lights – also on Eighth Tower Records, which we covered almost to the day in 2018. Here he is veering through swampy jungles and combining the engaging […]
Empty Chalice | Mother Destruction Toten Schwan Records (CD/DL) “Astonishing streams of crawling ambient with hints of light” Empty Chalice is the dark ambient moniker of Antonine A., hailing from Italy and Mother Destruction is his projects latest installment, an emotionally conceptual sequel of the previous album Emerging Is Submerging. Color grey. My experience […]
Martyria is a rather new dark/ritual ambient duo formed in 2015 and hailing from Greece. They use ritualistic instruments and their chants are based on eschatological texts, these two are the primary elements that define their music. Martyria is a path of studying the origin, nature and destiny of the human psyche. Want to know […]
Michał Turowski | Wormwood and Flame Mozdok/Positive Regression (CDR/DL) From a Warsaw imprint (Gazawat) and sound artist Michał Turowski comes something new from this relatively new artist who’s been putting out various tapes and small editions over the past four years, many collaborations. Even though this may fall under the sub-genre of ‘dark ambient’ it […]
The Star Pillow | Music For Sad HeadbangersAidan Baker + Karen Willems | AwelAidan Baker + N | DoppelliveScatterwound | MNThissquietarmy + Dirk Serries + Tom Malmendier | Hell “A multiverse of ambient/drone” from Midira Records A handful of drone/ambient cookies in CD format, to be collectively reviewed. Albums that have connections one with another. […]
MZ. 412 | Svartmyrkr Cold Spring Records (LP/CD/DL) + Cloister Recordings US (CS) “An exclamation of marching shadows” MZ. 412 is the project of Henrik Nordvargr Björkk (aka Kremator or simply Nordvargr), a very prolific electronic musician, hailing from Sweden. The beginning can be tracked back to 1988 as Maschinenzimmer 412, with Björkk being the […]
Nimh| Beyond The Crying Era Winter-Light (CD/DL) “Rich and full sonic soil” Giuseppe Verticchio is an experimental multi-instrumentalist and computer programmer hailing from Italy and in fact, he is quite productive, with a discography in excess of twenty albums with his main project Nimh since its beginning in 2001! Notable too, are his collaborations […]
Dark ambient has its roots in both the many eras of ambient that sprouted gently back in the mid 70’s with Brian Eno (and earlier, before it was termed such), German electronic music (Klaus Schulze, Can, Tangerine Dream, etc.) with a dash of punk/goth for good measure (Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Cure, Bauhaus, Joy […]
My Disco | Environment Downwards Records (LP/DL) The Australian trio My Disco (Rohan Rebeiro, Benjamin Andrews, and Liam Andrews) begin their new record with An Intimate Conflict, pretty much as it says, in the form of a continuous soft revving motor. It’s a bit unnerving, and a bit suspect, but serves as an industrial overture […]
Mount Shrine | Ghosts On Broken PavementCryo Chamber (CD/DL) “Noir sonic imagery” It’s a fact that ambient music emphasizes atmosphere over traditional musical structure. A revolutionary form of slow music with repetitive, gentle and soothing patterns, that can create atmosphere. The defining theme of “urban” is the presence of a great number of very different people […]
Ashtoreth | Rites I & IICyclic Law (LP/CD/DL) “Pendulum-like, ambient excursion” Here’s an interesting story. There was an amazing Belgian progressive, experimental hardcore band from Antwerp and their name was Maya. Until now, I consider their debut album as the epitome of hardcore progression, an utterly unrecognized gem and one of the most important hardcore […]
Duenn | BgmLine (DL) “Sound soaking in excellence” Though it goes without saying, Japanese electronic music in all it’s sub-genres, is a treasure trove of gems. Our world would not be the same without the involvement and the contribution of Japanese artists in every discipline! Duenn, hailing from Fukuoka, Japan, is a sound artist, […]
Inade | The Nine Colours Of The Threshold Loki Foundation (LP/CD/CS/DL) “Epic audio mythology ritual from the post-industrial era” There was a huge wave of post-industrial projects in the late 80’s, early 90’s, among them was Inade, a dark ambient duo, Knut Enderlein and René Lehmann, hailing from Leipzig, Germany ever since. Was the […]
Red Stars CPR | Earth Is Heaven / Heaven Is HellTesttoon (12”/DL) “The principle of Yin and Yang is that all things exist as inseparable and contradictory opposites”. Red Stars CPR is the collaborative moniker of Red Stars Over Tokyo and CPR. R.S.O.T. is the ambient/electronic project of Jeroen Lauwers hailing from Belgium. In […]
Elnath Project | ~ Focused Silence (CD/DL) “Music cannot exist without sound. Sound exists by itself without music. Music evolves over time. The sound is timeless. It’s the sound that matters. Sound is strength.” – Giacinto Scelsi Elnath Project consists of trumpeter Alessandro Ciccarelli and his new record simply titled by the tilde symbol is […]
Alina Kalancea | The 5th Apple Störung (2LP/CD) My first impression of Romanian sound artist Alina Kalancea is a double-take. Partly because every image of her visage on the web is partly obscured, even her own site appearing somewhat faceless – but most of all because her sound is more like the essence of perfume […]
Jeton Hoxha | Vowel Eighth Tower Records (DL) Jeton Hoxha is a welcome newcomer in the world of drone and all that is darkly mysterious. The Macedonian artist’s forty-five minute singular work is coated from end to end with a shmeared landscape of reverb and resonance, mastered by the hard working label runner, Sonologyst. It’s […]
VelgeNaturlig | Kundalini Winter-Light (CD/DL) We ease into the drifting drone of Portugese sound artist VelgeNaturlig (Ivo Santos) as he releases Kundalini on Dutch imprint Winter-Light. Blurring the lines of mystics and surveyors the setting is a many layered set of grey tones and soft bass harmonies on Padmasana. The air is ever-shifting, yet dense […]
Massimo Toniutti | Il Museo Selvatico Black Truffle (2xLP comes w/DL) Italian experimental sound designer, Massimo Toniutti, released this little known haunting, underground gem twenty seven years ago and Black Truffle was kind enough to unearth this collection of seven interesting tracks in a lavish double vinyl set in a gatefold printed inner sleeve. Il […]
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