Over the course of Dunk! history Zottegem has seen and heard some mesmerizing post rock bands. Inspired by forerunners like Godspeed, Explosions and Mogwai a wide array of acts have pushed the "typical" sound over the meadow. Yet, in my personal opinion, Dunk is no place for smashers like that, not only because they're too expensive for an intimate festival but also because the tickets will sell-out in no time to people who don't really care about the other bands, thus leaving the loyal Dunk! audience in the cold. No, Dunk is the place for Russian Circles, God Is An Astronaut, Mono and This Will Destroy You. Everything bigger than that can go do Cactus Festival or Werchter. 

Besides, what makes Dunk! such a stand-out is the vast amount of overall quality which turns a young, nervous band like The End Of The Ocean, Radare or Spoiwo into a world class performance act, let's not forget about that. Undoubtedly, in 2019 there will be plenty of bands with that classic post rock sound. Perhaps one or two of the previously mentioned bands will make a glorious return, since I read that they're both working on new material. Same goes for Cecilia::Eyes and Astodan. With those last two, we remain on Belgian territory and since Amenra climbed the Dunk! stage we all know what Belgians are capable of. 

Should Amenra return? That question has been on a lot of people's lips in the past few years. If that means that CHVE and Syndrome do solo performances at the forest stage I'm all in. Besides, an acoustic full-band set at the forest stage would also be wonderful. I'd actually rather see that: their version of 'Het Dorp' in the forest. The goosebumps would be tremendous, no doubt. 

Since we moved to the forest stage really early in this article, I see some neat possibilities there. Calm, soothing ambient sounds at night, not too loud but loud enough for everybody in the area to dream away on meandering soundscapes. People spread out on the forest floor, sailing on the drones of Biosphere, Eluvium or Helios. In fact, you don't even have to go abroad to find some decent ambient acts. Just ask Ashtoreth or Stratosphere to host one evening in the forest and it will be magical, I swear to whatever you believe in. Or have Dave Grohl play a thirty minutes drones set, that would also be fucking sweet.

It doesn't always have to be calm and soothing. A while ago I read that there's something new from I Am Waiting For You Last Summer. They were a fun surprise a few years back. Dance music and post rock can go pretty well together. With that, acts like Tycho, Yppah, Jon Hopkins and Nicolas Jaar/Darkside could bring a state of ecstasy to the big tent. So can Worriedaboutsatan who have proved that in the past. And why not, back in the woods, invite a mindbending psychedelic rock band like Ozric Tentacles and dance the night away. It's rock and it's instrumental, that counts. Dutch proggers Kong also answer to those conditions and their career is far from over. I really really really really really like to see that happen, preferable of course in their quadrophonic set up, which will bring them back on the pedestal I've placed them on all those years ago.

​And since we're on the subject of being instrumental and rocking, why not let the inventor of the forest stage make a glorious return to Dunk!. Some years ago, Eric occupied the woods and with that Thisquietarmy changed the whole atmosphere of the festival. I recently witnessed his full-band performance at Antwerp Music City. If anyone can outperform the seismic shock of Telepathy last year, it's Thisquietarmy The Band. In his turn, Eric could invite Aidan Baker over and have an evening-filling program with Hypnodrone Ensemble, Caudal and Nadja. Of course, Telepathy is also very welcome to return, so I'd say: "who not both?". 

Heaviness. Are we ready for post black metal yet? Deafhaven? Sólstafir? Alcest? Drawn Into Descent? Little by little blast-beats and screams have been infiltrating the line-up, so who knows. Then again, I'm not sure if that's what the Dunk audience is waiting for. Perhaps they like their heaviness a bit slower but still crushing like a steamroller. That takes me to Melvins or Neurosis or Cult Of Luna or something by former Isis members. Here in Belgium that would open the door for Charnia, Hæster or Angakok. Crushing riffs that smash skulls to pieces. Or why not go wild with some sludgy stoner grunge rock. There too is plenty to choose from, with Belgian nutcrackers Tangled Horns being the first one that comes to mind. Perhaps they could take over where Steak Number Eight left.

Throughout the years, Dunk Festival evolved from a post rock festival to an allround atmospheric music event. There is plenty of variation to be found. Even (dark) jazz has a place there, with Dirk Serries and Tomas Jarmyr paving the way for bands like Radare and Bolt to shine and charm. That brings me to Dale Cooper Quartet and the Dictaphones, Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore, A Sun Amissa or The Thing With Five Eyes. I have no idea who is when available to be where but some jazz would be neat indeed. 

Yet, as we all know, Dunk's solid core is still post rock. I guess their own label will be represented with bands like Coastlands, Tides Of Man, Stories From The Lost and that mysterious Girih entity. Perhaps Celestial Wolves or Doomina will make a comeback, having a new album and all. That's all perfectly fine by me, but if I could make some suggestions, invite The Evpatoria Report, Glasgow Coma Scale, Toundra and Jet Plane. Plus, perhaps give Wanheda a shot. They're getting somewhere and with the vintage Dunk sound, all of these would be pure bliss.
​
​There are truckloads of decent post rock band to be found, more than enough to fill a thousand stages at a thousand Dunk festivals. I'm sure that the organisation will come up with some classics, some surprises and a lot of excellence. But, do you know what I'd secretly like, even more than seeing someone finally propose to his girlfriend on stage: a guided tour through the pressing plant. I think it takes guts and a massive pair of testicles to throw an idea like that into motion, especially in these rough financial times. Building a pressing plant was a serious risk and a tremendous undertaking and I'd like to see it in action. Don't you?

So anyway, before I crawl my tired ass to bed: there can and probably will be some amazing bands appearing on the line-up in the next months. I can't wait to go back to the fields of Zottegem and watch the splendor of music turn everyday strangers into close friends. Because that's pretty much what Dunk is all about: they true spirit of the festivals, as Woodstock or Jazz Bilzen initially were intended. Sweet get-togethers with sweet people and sweet music in one of Belgium's greenest environments. I'm looking forward to that. 


Serge

Kammarheit is an ambient music project by Swedish sound artist Pär Boström, active for almost twenty years now, since the year 2000. A superb master in profoundly sculpting tense and dreadful, but very discreet and subtle afflictive dark sounds, his music is simple, but is able to conceive the most fearful, macabre and sinister atmospheres, that keeps the sense of an everlasting darkness lurking over you indefinitely, as if an impeding fatalist doom will inevitably take you over with sardonic horror. 

This amazing artist gracefully conceives sonorous labyrinths of impious malevolence, that feels reminiscent of a hostile and unknown force, as you feel yourself trapped in an endless place where everything that is evil and potentially harmful is waiting for you somewhere, and you feel you will be taken by this impious force when you least expect – a terrible and sadistic dark force from the underworld, disposed to inflict such a tremendous amount of atrocities over you that you will wish you had never been born. So, in other words, Kammarheit is the perfect soundtrack for reading authors like H.P. Lovecraft, or for playing macabre games like Quake. 

The first of his albums that I want to highlight is The Northern Hymn, released in 2002; an apparently unofficial record, that doesn’t feature on his discography. Forty-four minutes long, here you have the following tracks: Absconding the Physical (The Inner Hymn), Crystalline, Dreaming of the Forgotten Land, Semblance, Overview and Presence Within the Park. 

On this album, you will notice the formidable layouts that punctuate his music: a very tense paradigm of monumental afflictions, that gets over its superficial graveyard of emotions, doesn’t matter how or where you feel the corrosion invading the autonomy of your struggling imperative senses. You feel yourself being slowly dragged to a parallel dimension of ambiguous vertigos, as a latent and virulent sinister melody imprisons the conscience of your soul inside a lugubrious journey of fading realities, beyond an infinite realm of darkness that will sadistically arrest the universe in a somnolent and sensitive lethargic existence. 

As you sink in the nightmare, the delusions dispersed throughout the everlasting disparities of your weak sensibilities gets heavier and heavier, and you eventually fall desperately apathetic into a perpetual dark abyss, to a tragically unknown fate.  

Another album that deserves to be highlighted is the beautiful and equally sinister Somewhere Concealed. Apparently, this almost one hour long record was also released in 2002, like The Northern Hymn, and it’s also an unofficial album. Somewhere Concealed has the following tracks: Arriving, Making The First Flower, Underneath The Ravine, Frigid, The Fossilised Structures, Back To Where The Trees Spoke, In Silence Of The Plague and The Renewal. Like the previous album, this record also features afflictive, dense and heavy atmospheres, that make you feel yourself suffocated, imprisoned, lost in a very dreadful, large and empty dark house, all alone by yourself, without being able to find an exit.  

The claustrophobic feeling here is very latent. You feel yourself trapped – somewhere in the vastness of a darkness that never ends –, without being able to find a decent closure to a desperate situation. The tension, despite the fact that it is softer to a degree, is also afflictive and permanent. You feel a grizzly darkness consuming your soul slowly, cynically; as you drown in desperation completely surrounded by a devouring emptiness, your life easily disappears, as a brutal nothingness surrounds you, and you eventually feel entirely dematerialized, forever lost in a vacuum continuum, that will extend itself infinitely, over a lugubrious perpetual darkness, destined to never fade, but to seek new victims. 

As the album approaches the end, you can hear the sound of crows croaking – which is a remote fear grounded in the lore of human folklore and superstition –, and adds to the sinister element of a hostile and unknown place, that is inherently aggressive to the human presence. 

The third album that I want to comment here is the fantastic and splendorous The Starwheel, released in 2005. With a more calm and serene atmosphere – a little less deprived of elements of anguish and sardonic doom –, though featuring invasive ecstatic components of nefarious apathy more prominently, that inserts its sinister qualities very subtlety, this album is also a major starlight for the genre of dark ambient. An eminently ardent and spectral world that is subdued by a sensitive, but tense serenity, this formidable masterpiece is abundant in peripheral and abstract densities, that discreetly and vaguely corrode your sense of reality, to allow you to enter into a depressive dimension of lunar gravity, as the floatingly favorable ascendant harmonies present on this album make you feel a little more confident, knowing that you have to expect the unexpected on this journey of pervasively unprecedented darkness.  

The Starwheel definitely make you undergo a nefarious journey, though with a more cautious and clear conscience, despite the fact that, after some time, it’s impossible not to fall in the elusive dark precipice, upon which you have been inadvertently walking. Not as frightening as The Northern Hymn – at least in my opinion –, nevertheless, on this album, the image that comes to my mind is a man walking in an endless journey throughout a snowy landscape. The sky is gray, there is no clouds, and nobody can be seen nearby. Your solitude is absolute, and you feel yourself compelled to keep walking towards the horizon, never to finally arrive anywhere. And you walk endlessly, but the journey never ends. The landscape is always the same, the wind is hostile and whistles a mysterious horrendous sound, that will eventually resort to a perpetual darkness, falling over the superficial placidity of your delusional dreams.  

On this album, we can hear the characteristic style of the artist. The atmosphere resonates a fatalist doom that will eventually come, but it’s impossible to know precisely when. As this sensation of imminent demise gets near, but never comes – although you know it’s just a matter of time – you become more and more tense, anxious and afflicted. The landscape seems frozen, you are lost in the middle of a white desert, with some dry dead trees around you. You feel death is near, but there is nothing you can do to stop this horrendous sensation of misery, despair insecurity and nervousness. So you just sit and wait for the fatalist doom to befall over you, as you can’t do anything to avoid it, anyway. 

Of course, I don’t want you to think that the music of Kammarheit is destitute of calmer or serene qualities, that would be positively untrue. On the contrary, some tracks are full of those, and it’s impossible not to feel marvelously ecstatic and relaxed while listening to it, at least in certain passages. There are different graduations and textures in his music that definitely allows a varied scale of suggestive perceptions to be felt throughout its infinite expansion of sonorous horizons. The music of Kammarheit has definitely a vivacious and distinctive versatility, that is mostly varnished by discreet and somber tonalities, which makes the music in a general basis intrinsically able to explore in each layer of sound a movable variation of possibilities, that reaches high standards on the human sensibility. 

The final album that I want to comment here is a more recent one. Kollektionen was released in 2016. Seventy-seven minutes long, this record is a selection of Kammarheit tracks, featured in other albums and compilations. They are the following:  The Hierophant, Tundra, Kosmos, The Excavation Site, I Found It Weeping In The Field, Landfall, Dreams And Seracs, Adrift, Ruina, Provenience and Arch. 

Featuring prominently all the qualities described above, although with a more dreadful virulence, the sound on this album is undoubtedly more homogeneous, but also appears to be more clean and sober, which makes me think that it was better produced. With nefarious sounds, a dispersive tension and a lugubrious layout – graciously defined by a cohesive sense of abrasive, drastic and pungent continuity, more prominent than his other albums – that genuinely inspires fear and despair, the unknown element is very latent here. You definitely feel yourself trapped in a world of permanent darkness; severely impotent, you feel there is nothing you can do to escape the terrible and drastic fate that will eventually befall over you.

Last, but not least, I should point it out the marvelous video of a live performance by Kammarheit, recorded in 2015. Concealed in the darkness with amazingly suggestive images in the background, on this performance, you can see with a more surreal prominence the strongest aspects of Pär Boström’s musicianship. He is very technical and methodical – a skilled engineer of sound –, that knows exactly how silence, quietness and calmness can work beautifully as marvelous extensions of sound. He definitely has conscience about where and when to integrate the most precise elements and the most fundamental vitalities of his creative intuition, to perfectly work altogether, to create the sinister soundscapes he masterfully exposes on this ecstatic performance.    

 While there isn’t any movements – and he is tiny at the center of the stage – you can definitely perceive the cinematic and sensitive elements of the genre, as dark ambient really is about suggestive sounds and atmospheric perceptions. You can listen to his dense and somber tunes while accompanying the slow, but ever changing images, that definitely captures marvelously all the fantastic and ominous sensibilities driven by the sound.    

Kammarheit is simply one of the most fantastic, splendorous and formidable dark ambient acts ever conceived. Exploring wisely the possibilities, working altogether marvelously all the fundamental qualities of the genre – a sinister musical layout, anxious and afflictive harmonies, agonizing fearful undulations, lugubrious atmospheres, horrendous suggestive tonalities, gradual fatalist uprisings, dark discreet melodies, indefinite macabre resonances, nefarious unexpected disturbances – the artist definitely has proved himself quintessential to the development of the genre. With a sensible discretion and a proverbially dense subtlety that aggregates tension and fear to fatalist sonorous dissonances that evolve gradually, the atmosphere of his songs are pervasively sinister and morbidly tense. Certainly, your nightmares will be suggestively fuelled by these gruesome sounds, that concomitantly serves as the best soundtracks ever created to nightmarish sensations. 

As the eternal night advances, you can be certain that Kammarheit will continue to create and to produce the best frightening sounds and the most sinister albums ever created in the history of dark ambient music. This is a splendid, creative and very lucid artist, certainly one of the greatest in the annals of the genre. 



​Wagner

Kort daarna kwam ons landje in de greep van gemeenteraadsverkiezingen en leek de hele episode rond Consouling Sounds te verwateren. Maar ondertussen, in een stevige uiting van "kust onze kloten", ging er een eindje verderop een spiksplinternieuwe vinylpersfabriek open. De mannen van Dunk! hadden eerder ook al een mooie som centen aan hun neus voorbij zien gaan onder het motto "niet relevant", "geen geld meer voor". Toch hielden ze er niet mee op, integendeel. Als volleerde F35's schoten ze uit de startblokken en vlamden ze alle twijfels aan flarden. Zotte shit, ik weet het, maar uiteraard totaal niet relevant.

Het nieuws kwam eigenlijk niet eens als een verrassing maar het trof ergens wel het hart van de Belgische "underground". Er worden immers overal subsidies ingetrokken. Het geld is op, de put is te diep. "Het spijt ons maar na weloverwogen blabla hebben wij besloten blabla want u bent niet blabla." Zoiets. Vooral de melding "U levert geen kwaliteit" kwam als een tsunami over. Daarmee werd plots iedereen beledigd die van rock, metal, sludge, doom, post-rock, post-metal, ambient, dark ambient, dark jazz, drones, industrial, krautrock, alternative rock, indie pop, hardcore, punk, black metal, death metal, noise, gothic rock, modern classical,  post-hardcore, neofolk, downtempo, trip hop, electronic, crossover, progressive, noise, nu metal en grunge houdt. En dat zijn er wel wat.

Als er iets relevant is in deze maatschappij, dan is het toch wel de muziekwereld, niet? De frustratie, de pijn en de woede in onze metalscene, die gevoelens gaan over u, dames en heren politici, veel relevanter kan het toch niet zijn?  U zou verplicht moeten worden om al die songteksten eens goed te lezen, maar ik weet dat u het bos door het beton niet meer ziet dus daar zullen we u al niet mee lastig vallen. Niet relevant. Wie zijn dan wel relevant? K3? Kapitein Winokio? De Romeo's? Niks tegen die mensen maar het cognitieve niveau van hun doelgroep is net iets te laag om mijn volle vertrouwen te kunnen genieten.

Niet relevant. Er staan files omdat er optredens in het Sportpaleis zijn. Files zijn het meest voorkomende gespreksonderwerp in heel België.​ Als u touren zou afschaffen, zouden er minder files zijn, maar ik wil u niet op ideeën brengen. Als u latere treinen zou inleggen, zouden er ook minder files zijn, om u maar op een idee te brengen. Niks leuker dan na een avondje headbangen in Brussel in de trein te zitten mijmeren. Nagenietend van een fantastisch concert veilig naar huis gebracht worden door een betrouwbare trein- of busmaatschappij, dat is tof. Maar ik heb dan ook geen chauffeur.

Laten we gewoon lekker eerlijk zijn, dames en heren politici. U houdt gewoon niet zo van de muziekwereld. U interesseert zich geen moer voor wat de rockers, de metalheads en de alternatievelingen uitkramen, nietwaar? Al die gore onderwereldrotzooi is een ranzige ver-van-uw-bed-show waar u het bestaan liever van ontkent.  U vertrouwt hen niet, omdat zij u de indruk geven dat zij u eigenlijk nergens voor nodig hebben. En dat is ook zo. Daar in die concertzaal bent ù niet relevant, brengt ù geen kwaliteit, heeft ù geen geschiedenis. Daar spuwen jonge, meestal vrij intelligente en vrij aardige mensen, hun gal en daar delen zij de lakens uit. 

Nog zoiets. Geen geschiedenis. Consouling Sounds zet al tien jaar Belgische topacts op de kaart. Amenra trekt in Amerika meer volk dan eender welke politieke conferentie hier. Ook hier weer straalt het uit naar de hele underground. Antwerp Music City doet al vijfentwintig jaar zijn ding, tussen de door u o zo gevreesde vreemdelingen. Dat is langer dan de gemiddelde politieke carrière. Jazz Bilzen heeft iets losgemaakt hier, niet te schatten. Geen geschiedenis, wat een wereldvreemde nonsens. Toegegeven, de gemiddelde muzikant in België heeft geen handjes afgehakt omdat zijn roadies te traag waren, maar om ons nu geschiedenisloos te noemen vind ik wel een beetje ver gaan.

Lang geleden bouwden enkele Limburgse jongeren een podium. Ze wilden wel eens iets anders dan een vaandelzwaaifestival. Hun festivalletje werd een succes. Doorheen de jaren kwamen er grote namen op af, namen die geschiedenis zijn. Armand, Boudewijn de Groot, Wannes Van de Velde, Roland, Moody Blues, Taste, Rory Gallagher, Cat Stevens, Small Faces, The Move, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, The Kinks, The Troggs, Procol Harum, Golden Earring, The Bonzo Dog Band, Rod Stewart, Status Quo, Lou Reed, Aerosmith, AC/DC, The Cure, The Kids, Van Morrison, James Brown, Elvis Costello, The Police, Thin Lizzy, The Clash, Blondie en Nils Lofgren. Jazz Bilzen werd de "moeder aller festivals". Dàt hoort in de geschiedenisboeken want dàt heeft generaties geïnspireerd. 

België is het epicentrum van de Europese muziekindustrie. Elk dorp heeft zijn concertzaal, of tenminste een plek waar al eens een concertje kan doorgaan. Ik heb honderden artiesten ontmoet die maar al te graag in dit land willen spelen. Onze know-how is wereldberoemd. Ons publiek is geliefd tot in Maleisië. Ze zeggen wel eens, "hoe slechter het land draait, hoe beter de muziek wordt", enne, ik heb de laatste maanden en jaren toch een bende fantastische concerten van Belgische acts gezien. Gisteren vlamde Astodan door een lekker smeuïge set post-rock. Astodan ja, zegt u als politicus waarschijnlijk niets maar het is kwaliteit van Belgische makelij.

Het is allemaal wel waar wat ik hier neerschrijf, maar ik betwijfel of het ooit een zak uithaalt. Al sinds de jaren tachtig, toen ik mijn eerste schamele stapjes in de muziekwereld zette, merkte ik dat we liever doodgezwegen worden. Al eerder riepen punkers dat de kernraketten weg moesten, dat was toen relevant. Al eerder riepen musici op om het milieu te sparen, dat was toen relevant. Al eerder organiseerden rockers benefietconcerten tegen kanker, voor verdraagzaamheid, voor elkaar, dat was voor hen relevant. Maar dat is allemaal maar geneuzel van een bende marginalen, niet?

Als we dan toch een positieve noot aan onze geschiedenis willen geven, waarom dan onze muziekwereld niet erkennen en steunen? 


Serge

A selection by Wagner Hertzog 

There are a lot of albums, in several distinct genres, from several different categories, periods and places, that are enormously underrated and overtly unappreciated, never achieving the level of recognition and fame they certainly deserve. This mainly occurs for one reason: most of them come from underground bands and artists, that are – in the vast majority of the cases –, virtually unknown, being appreciated only by a handful of enthusiasts or by a loyal cult following. Other artists, like some Japanese musicians that integrate this list, are relatively well-known, but only in their country of origin, being strange to audiences abroad. 

Regardless of the motives about why these albums haven’t achieved the degree of notoriety they deserve, I’ve selected here twelve records in no particular order or genre whatsoever – on the contrary, here you will find a good diversity, from atmospheric black metal and dark ambient, to neo-folk and new age symbolic symphonies, to minimalist piano pieces and post-classic Japanese music – that, at least in my opinion, deserves a higher level of evaluation and appreciation from the critical musical establishment, and mostly, from the general public; at least, a lot more appreciation of what they initially had amassed, giving them the opportunity to reach audiences that aren’t familiar or haven’t being introduced to their respective works. I hope you enjoy at least some of them, and spread the ones you like the most to your musical friends. Let’s make music – these albums included – to be dispersed, publicized and heard everywhere!

Forty minutes long, with seven tracks – Ecstasy, Calmness At Stress, Confounded,Pt.1, Confounded,Pt.2, Prowl In Reverie, Life Era and Regret –, this acoustic neo-folk ambient work is strongly suggestive of calmer abysses, low temperatures and digressive disdains over the painful, but sincere vicissitudes of life. It’s easy to imagine a reflexive and distant existence terraforming over the planetary solitude of infinite eras, while you dream peacefully over the sonorous contemplative ordeal that will come to your mind. A salutary nostalgia flirts with the end of a melancholic afternoon, that anticipates in a soft rain all the inspiring timeless sagacity of an energy that slowly dissipates itself from within. Certainly, you will find this album relaxing, tranquil and overtly peaceful. Impossible not to like it!  

A curiously efficient and dense black metal work – with predominantly slow harmonies – that instills in the listener an efficiently intrusive, but patient emotional exhilaration, this group from Sweden to this day is vastly unknown. This album is apparently from 2009, and I sincerely don’t know if the band is still in activity. Nevertheless, their music is amazingly skilled, their exceedingly powerful creativity ostensibly breaks the ordinary standards of the genre, and their harmonies are well-crafted and original, but at the same time loyal to the most profound references of underground black metal. With vastly lugubrious intonations and a sinister sonority that drives the melodies to a dark horizon of distinctive frivolities, I think you can say Into the Darkness of My Soul is an excellent contemporary exemplar of true-to-the-roots black metal, with no imperfections at all to be highlighted.  

Melodic black metal that seems to flirt with the epic and atmospheric subgenres at some extent. Vibrant, dense and conspicuously sinister – although at the same time kind, familiar and gentle –, the sound of Dying Stars’ Walking Across The World is a superb, indefinite and infinite stream of ghostly demise, spreading its monumental, serene, minimalized and diverse artistry throughout a panorama of primordial lancinating beauty. Forty four minutes long, the record has nine tracks: Madness Of Nuclear World, Where Eternal Silence, Dying Star, In Captive Oblivion, Ghost Of Karpaty, From Endless Space, Downpour and The Mist. Its fantastic harmonies flows directly into the eventful kingdoms of an imaginary existence, where eternity waits for the shadows of your soul to merge into the twilights of a magnificent horizon, that has on the conscience of an everlasting splendor the fatalist answer for all enigmas of life. Its poetic and reflexive undertones gives a glorious philosophic color to this beautiful record.  

Amazingly sinister, unexpected and anxiously dark ambient from Norway, Svartsinn – a relatively well-known name in this vastly infamous underground genre, with several albums released – is the creative vehicle for Jan Roger Pettersen. Fifty-one minutes long, Traces of Nothingness has eight tracks: Traces Of Nothingness, No Passage to the Innermost..., Lost in Reveries, Misanthropic Odyssey, Through Apathetic Eyes, All The Colours Are Fading, ...But The Fire Burns No More and Emptiness Is Form. Empirically dwelling throughout the dark vastness of a very personal universe of agonizing emptiness, this album, despite having the sonority somewhat typical for the genre, has a lucid degree of creativity, that displays an excellent degree of originality. With an exceedingly somber atmosphere, and a nervous placidity that anticipates the everlasting shadows of something unknown lurking in the density of lugubrious immortal fears, Traces of Nothingness is a delightful, but dreadful work of art, that masterly exhibits in impeccable form the most fundamental and extraordinary qualities of the genre, elevated in an exponential scale. 

Effervescent, delirious, glamorous, poetically rapturous and violently conspicuous black metal with exceedingly perfect harmonies, Dråpsnatt is a group from Sweden that it’s difficult to know if it’s still active or not. Hymner till undergången was apparently released in 2014, and has nine tracks: En Ensam Sol Går ner, Arvssynd, Dråpsnatt, Mannen I Min Spegel, Somna In, Ve Er, Tonerna De Klinga, En Besvuren Plats and Gästen. With a sinister, but splendorous sound that comes from the shadows, spectral guitar lines resounds the fury of an eternity of tormented wrath and suffering. The virulent creative and energetic sagacity of this marvelous BM act certainly eviscerates a sonorous compendium of miraculous artistry, whose sensitive level of originality deserves to be highlighted as a fundamental cornerstone of the genre. Undoubtedly, this will be one of the best BM albums that you will ever have the pleasure to hear in your life. 

Drinking Songs, by Matt Elliot, is a simple, but beautiful album. Calm, serene, relaxing, circumspect – eager to understand the introspective subtleties upon which its harmonies devour the plenitude of an intrusive conscience – with melodies that drives the sentimental gravities of the abundant frivolities of the heart to a distant, but definite melancholic paradise, this graceful album reiterates its deceptive quest for a silent anxiety, reverberating the latitudes of its own quietness. While a little slow, the album definitely has a charming, dense and proverbial quintessential mood, that invites the listener to dive deep into the creative elements of its own sorrow; with a finishing hour cabaret vibe that converges to a distinctive nostalgia, where you remember everything you want to forget, Drinking Songs is an album that has an atmosphere of its own, comparable to the fragrant alcoholic vapors of an early Sunday morning, that will never end until someone bargains his own soul to be able to buy more drinks. 

With all its versatile virtuosity, but deeply concentrated style, Scenery is an album of lucid piano sonatas and quasi-ballads, strongly conceived with solid improvisations and magical short notes, designed to inspire happiness. With six tracks – It Could Happen To You, I Want To Talk About You, Early Summer, Willow Weep For Me, Autumn Leaves and Scenery – the album is reminiscent of piano bars with a lot of cigarette smoke, fulfilled from top to bottom by an atmosphere immersed in sweet nostalgia, and ingratiates itself in the jazz and blues aura upon which its music was seemingly influenced.

A very melodic, delicate and serene album, Mist, by Thom Brennan, is a very dispersive atmospheric piece, whose sound seems shrouded in mist and secrecy: an imponderable and enigmatic sonorous journey towards the graveyard of a restless conscience, this record is an elegant and dense ambient accomplishment, that delivers an enthusiastic, but smoothly diluted calmness to the embrace of existence. A very consistent and dramatic album, with long interludes and vast dynamic sequences whose discreet expansion resonates over the cosmic infinity of its gracious and lucid, but somewhat solitary sensibilities, Mist, by Thom Brennan, is a deep dive into the horizon of an everlasting wakefulness, whose proverbial grace elaborates in the density of its sensational premises the resolution for a symphony that contains a majestic element of eternity at the core of its notes.  

Another album that envisions and delivers a formidable sense of splendorous calmness, Sunday Morning Peace, by Jonn Serrie, is a virtuous and systematic dive into the infinity of a glorious and affable eternity, involved by a dense and sober sonorous tenacity. With a serenity that seems spectacularly vivid, but at the same time crystallized by the sensibilities of its flexible atmosphere of melodic profoundness, this almost one hour long album has only five very extensive tracks: the title track Sunday Morning Peace, Maiden Voyage, The Enlightened Path,
Breath of the Valley and Sea Mist. While its laborious virtuosity really encapsulates the surreal world that ingratiates itself in the vicinities of an harmonious realm of marvelous relaxation, the expansive dimensional tones that disperse its atoms through the vastness of its musical cadences are astonishingly effective. With a gracious mobility that enables its gradual rhythmic flow to surpass its own extemporal fluidity, Sunday Morning Peace, by Jonn Serrie, is definitely a wonderful artistic ordeal, that anticipates in the genuine possibilities of its own intrinsic elements the glorious musical narrative of the conception of a personal, but familiar universe.    

A discreet, minimalist and very organic new age album, whose main vitality relies on the happier, fluid and vivid tonalities of its sensible and gracious sonorous anatomy, the simple, yet reverberating sense of continuity present on this record – filled with nature-inspired sounds and overflowing colorful melodies delivered in waves of subtle harmonious fragrances, Green is one of those very distinct and peculiar authorial works, whose creative audacities really conceive a somewhat experimental, eccentric and original set of standards. At the highlight of its imperative synergy, Green certainly can be considered a proverbial piece of lucid and insightful grace, whose slow, but symmetric balance definitely conceives a dense, introspective and carefully elaborated universe of its own.   

A more proverbial and melancholic sinister piece, Piano Nights, by Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, is a delightful minimalist experience, that recognizes in the lugubrious atmosphere of its slow monumental cadences the lucid and dramatic possibilities of its somber serenades. With the insightful cholera of despondency, the music seems to departure from a world of infinite midnight, eager to extend the agony of its melodies over all dimensional waves of existence. With a cohesive use of silence and space between notes, the style of Bohren & Der Club Of Gore reflects a solitary, erudite and sensible musical arrangement, that also impresses by the virtue of its simplicity. With the silent grace of its lurid, but somewhat hyperbolic notes, this album reinstates over the sagacity of its latent premise the slow acerbic rhythm of life, as the rain falls somewhere, inside the scenery of a conformist doom.  

With beautiful harmonies, restrained to a modest, but elegant layer of space and time, In the Mood for love already explains in the title the grandiosity of its purpose. This formidable, eloquent, suggestive and delicate masterpiece is a sentimental symphony that reads in the cosmogony of its own discreet expansive omniscience the iridescent structure of its ascendant patterns. A melancholic serenade that evades the request for a modest ocean of incisively tempestuous calmness, this album has a sophisticated and expressively dense musical ambition, whose strength lies objectively in the dense diagram of its passionately intricate serenity, projecting the anatomic balance of the sound towards a sensitive spectacle of marvelous infinity.