dark ambient

At The gates of Ouin is  Abbildung’s second release on the Winter-Light label and the twelfth recording since the start in 2004. This dark ambient project from Sibiu Romania was founded by Casian Stefan. The name Abbildung comes from the picture theory of meaning, expressed by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Are we aware of the other worlds in our world? The sounds and peregrinations that Abbildung displays on At The gates of Ouin, are unseen journeys in our macro cosmos. The soft and peaceful dark soundscapes resonate like frolic philosophical audio stories. These dense layers of choirs and detailed field recordings are well balanced mysteries of sound architecture. 
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The tension of this beautiful dark ambient story is  slowly building up. With spiritual and haunting choruses Abbildung creates a ravishing twilight of unknown creepy and enchanting worlds. Our favourite track is Travelers Of Eternal Spheres. The deep and emotional soundscapes whisper chilling feelings of blackened and desolated off-worlds. At The Gates Of Ouin is a gateway to a dark and incomprehensible chaos drowned in deep addictive sounds.

After a few listening trips, the echoes of these mind filling soundscapes develop an unearthly transcending mood. These six tracks of classic dark ambient have their own specific style. Abbildung created with At The gates of Ouin a sound theory of interpretation, articulated by its stunning music. This high quality release is available on CD and digital download on the Winter-Light Bandcamp page. 


Patsker

black metal

As far as I can recall, I've never been abducted by aliens – that privilege seems to be reserved for tinfoil hatters. In any case, the songs on Abduction's “All pain as Penance” feel like I'm being administered a violent anal probing by a violet vixen from Venus... I might become a believer after all.

Anyways, the band. Abduction is, surprisingly, a one-man black metal band from the UK. Surprising, because it does not sound like a one-man band, but rather like a tight band that has frequently played together. Not that there's anything wrong with one-man bands, after all they are the salt and pepper of black metal...

A|V is Abduction's mastermind, and on this record he was assisted by EG on drums. It's not his first release, apparently Abduction already released three albums before his one.

“All pain as Penance” consists of seven songs, the fourth of which is an instrumental, neatly splitting the track listing in two. Immediately apparent is the clear, powerful sound, that helps to convey the sinister messages in these songs – titles like “Convulsing at Baalbek” and “The funeral of Cosmic Mastery” leave not much to the imagination...

A|V uses a neat trick to keep the songs interesting: on more than one occasion, he introduces a melodic, epic chord progression, which he gradually elaborates upon, and intensifies. It's almost post-rock , but not quite...cool!

Highlights for me are the killer riffs in “Prayer of Electrocution” and the majestic last song, “The funeral of Cosmic Mastery”. Overall, there's not a single weak moment, so this record comes with a high replay value. Nice release.


​Koen

instrumental / acoustic

There’s an expression in Latin American Spanish language that says “aire de chamamé”, “aire de zamba”, something that could be translated to “inspired by chamamé”, “inspired by zamba”. This expression means that you can’t say exactly that you know what rhythm is being played, it reminds you some specific rhythm, but in a particular way that the musician who is playing it has “absorbed it”. This is the translation that Rafael did, because ‘Inspirações’ is the portuguese word for inspirations. This is the point that Rafael achieved on his solo album: all the songs are like musical photographs that were taken during his travels across the large number of countries in Latin America!

‘Inspirações’ begin with ‘Rio Abaixo’ and ‘Ela’, two musics that could be interpreted as preludes in slow tempo, the first one have inspirations from the rural brazilian music and the second is a zamba (an argentinean rhythm); then we are presented to ‘Nossa Casa’, a chamamé (tradicional argentinean rhythm); ‘Passagem Crioula Nº1, Nº2 and Nº3’ were composed during a latin american tour and show all the influences that he had during this time; ‘Tempo’ is a prelude for the returning of ‘Ela’, but at this time with the presence of Badi Assad; ‘Dançando com ela’ is so interesting, because it starts with a kind of fast milonga (another argentinean rhythm), but then other percussion instruments start to been played and you have a baião (a northeast brazilian rhythm)! ‘Cabreiro’ and ‘Choro pro Motor’ are excellent tributes to the old choro groups of Rio de Janeiro, even more because of the addition of a clarinet and a “pandeiro”! This album finish with a beautiful version of ‘Rio Abaixo’ with a contrabass played by Pedro Macedo and a solo version of ‘Passagem Crioula Nº3’, bringing back a previous material in an intelligent way by adding an instrument in the penultimate music and removing an instrument in the last music.

After traveling through countries like Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and Brazil (of course) it’s natural that Rafael had inspirations from as many different rhythms as milonga, choro, zamba, chamamé, paraguayan polka, baião, rural Brazilian music, choro, and so on! This internalized musical diversity is the key point that makes this album so interesting, because it portrays - in an extremely personal way - the Latin American guitar music, featuring Badi Assad and Pedro Macedo! It's fantastic to see a work like ‘Inspirações’: An album without any kind of prejudice being released in a time when more and more people care about imaginary divisions beetween human beings... something that we use to call borders...

P.S.: If you like to buy the physical CD or any score of this album, just send an e-mail to rafaelcardosoviolao[at]gmail[dot]com.


Glauber

metal / metalcore

While browsing through my pile of CDs to be reviewed, I found this little thing. I think it has been there for a while. I remembered when it came in. I opened the envelop and saw the CD plus the biography. I read the words "symphonic" and "metalcore" which almost caused the album to become forgotten.

Why? Well, I simply don't like metalcore and it has been ages since I listened to symphonic metal. Today the album almost literally fell into my lap while I was sorting out the CDs. I decided to give it a shot and I have to say, I am not as disappointed as I thought I would be.

The album opens with the powerful and forward pushing 'Lilith'. Immediately influences from bands like Arch Enemy, Trivium and Lacuna Coil appear. Fronted by the versatile Lola Van Loo, this Swiss band is a raging tribute to metal, certainly capable of causing most pits and crowd surfers. So far so good but the following track, 'Don't Waste Your Time' somewhat reduces the joy. Although this is not a bad song, you can hear a searching band, not yet fully convinced of their abilities. Either that, or they take the element of experimentation a bit too far.

Then again, 'Crawling In The Dirt' is a top level metal track, combining the best from Otep with the best of Arch Enemy and that is a serious compliment. It also show a bit of humor, which I think is a good thing. 'Blue Scorpion' is a cracker but also seems to drown in the planned versatility of the band. Sometimes I feel as if Chaoseum tried to adopt too many influences at once, giving the music an unnecessary complexity. In my opinion, fans will crave more tracks like the brutal 'F.T.S.' or the pummeling 'Devil's Wedding'.

'First Step To Hell' is not a bad album. In fact, it's certainly above average. The music is performed to perfection. There is plenty of power and the whole thing is varied enough to remain interesting, apart from a few missteps. What Chaoseum needs now is heaps of stage performances. If all goes well there, there is a big change for founding them on big stages in the future. In a few years, they might release a masterpiece. This CD has planted the seeds for that. There is potential, that's for sure.


​Serge

ambient

The Heisei period is the current era in Japan. It period started on 11 of January 1989 after the death of the Emperor Hirohito, when his son, Akihito, acceded to the throne as the 125th Emperor. The Heisei period will likely end on 30 April 2019 (Heisei 31), the date on which Emperor Akihito is expected to abdicate the Chrysanthemum Throne and pass it to his son, Naruhito.
For composer Hirotaka Shirotsubaki this era has been hugely important. He grew up throughout it and now needs to prepare for a new era. In tribute of that, 'Last Goodbye' celebrates and parts way with the old. The result is a beautiful and melancholic ambient album.

The album contains six tracks, each one breathing a gloomy, nostalgic atmosphere. Very early in opener 'Autumn Blanket', ambient pioneer Biosphere comes to mind but throughout the rest of the album that reference gradually fades away. Hirotaka Shirotsubaki delivers a more minimal approach, with meandering soundscapes and soothing guitar drones. On 'Rokko', these drones come close to the calmest pieces of people like Aidan Baker and Dirk Serries, something I can only admire.

There is a lot of emotion hidden beneath these compositions, which results in an immersive and rich sound, one that every fan of ambient music will appreciate. Picking a favorite track is difficult. The bright yet wintery soundscapes of 'Solitude' are beautiful but so is everything else here. If I have to pick, it will be either 'Rokko' or the mildly pulsating closer 'Sputnik'. What is certain, however, is the fact that these tracks will definitely appear in my day-to-day playlist from now on. I suggest you do the same.


​Serge

doom / drone / post metal

This website is grooving into its fifth year. I started Merchants Of Air in 2014, back then by reviewing random albums from bands I admired. It didn't take very long for other bands to send their music to our mailbox and, even though some people might not believe it, our mailbox can now be compared to an ever-flowing river. One of those first bands was Oldd Wvrms from Houffalize, Belgium. They appeared here several times, with reviews for 'Mater Serpentium' & 'NØT' (2015), 'Ignobilis' (2017) and a gig in Antwerp Music City (2017). They also appeared on one of our birthday compilations. So if there is such a thing as a "traditional" Merchants Of Air band, it might be these guys.

'Codex Tenebris', their latest album, is another sonic adventure of epic proportions. It will be released February 15 by Cursed Monk Records. With five lengthy tracks, Oldd Wvrms once again deliver an impending and immersive instrumental doom metal album. I used the word "traditional" before and it quite fits with this full-length too. This album feels like a natural next step for this band. Elements of drone ambient, stoner rock, black metal and post metal infiltrate the riff loaded tracks. The result is a meandering sound, something that resembles a lava flow.

There is one element on this album I simply adore. Large passages in 'A l'or, aux ombres et aux abîmes' and 'Misère & Corde' drive on a brilliant rolling bass, adding a lot of groove to the whole thing. Along with the strong drum performance, this bass delivers a solid foundation for the guitars to do their thing. And halfway through the latter song, that thing is amazing, somewhere between Tool and Russian Circles. This combination guarantees shaking heads in front every stage where these guys play.

'La vallée des tombes' is my favorite track here, although I have to say that I've enjoyed every single second of the whole album. Yet, musically, this track is one of those unforgettable doom metal anthems that grab you by the throat. This surely is some melancholic and dark music, perfectly suited for a late night gig in a forest in Zottegem (*wink*). Anyhow, this album is a stunner, another perfectly crafted piece of Belgian sludge doom post metal or whatever you like to call it these days. My advice: pre order the hell out of this monster. You will not regret it, I promise.


​Serge

dark electro / synthwave

The NightStalker is a solo project of Bram Van Cauter. This Belgian artist has a very keen vision of combining different styles of music. Deathbringer is his personal ode to the eighties’ horror and sleaze culture. His fascination for crime, serial killers and dystopia are the guidelines through his solo debut album.

Deathbringer starts with an intro, narrating the atmosphere of old horror movies. A mysterious organ sends us back into the seventies. Footsteps in the dark and deadly female screams start a soundtrack of Gothic and other terrifying stories. The NightStalker shows how a mix of metal guitars and synths can work perfectly in harmony. The tension on this album is high and surprising. The samples of conversations and whispering during the mostly instrumental tracks create a strange feeling.

Bram Van Cauter was the guitar player and songwriter of the extreme Belgian metal band Herfst. He worked together on some of their recordings with super producer Dan Swanö. His metal inheritance on the guitar sound and riffs played on Deadbringer is obvious. But no, this isn’t metal. The album has a very high electronic body music level mixed with soundtrack-like parts. Repulsive Compulsion is the best example. This pumping track takes you deeper into the thoughts of a serial killer. The electro beats and guitar riffs bring a Gothic mood of threatening darkness.

The guitars on the tracks are tightly played while the synths and orchestrations create a cinematic vibe. This music gives you the feeling of a long night ride on an endless and abandoned motorway. The audio of this old school horror movie soundtrack is obscure but still recognizable.  On Grave Pleasures the saxophone parts sound even deadly sexy. 

The NightStalker presents with Deadbringer a world of fear and swarthiness with a large variation of music styles melted into a beautiful attainment. Tape and vinyl of this surprising and wonderful album are available through the artist’s Bandcamp page.

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Patsker 

electronic 

A marvelous album, whose enigmatic and profoundly subtle essence is defined by the hypnotic, incisive and intrinsic glory of its dispersive nature, the fragmented harmonious style of this work is proverbially fluid, dynamic and vivaciously graceful. Departing from exceedingly cohesive harmonies – that rely over the structure of it’s somewhat impenitent, but lucid and tangentially dilated sonorous boundaries –, the continuous tissue of expansive tonalities that gradually filters its salutary sequences reveals a sagacious and beautiful style of electronic music, that sometimes flirts discreetly with sublime post-classical overtones, astoundingly aggrandizing the eventful light of its intuitive musical essence. 

Disclosing patient patterns of sonority that reveals its subjective, though ambitious musical approach, Sliced Reflections is everything, but conventional or ordinary: projecting its versatile qualities in a gracious realm of extreme and fabulous mordacity, the sagacious originality of the artist is dispersed over several disparate elements, upon which the music conceives itself almost as a mosaic made up of increasingly different, but elegant, astute and apparently divergent inspirations, combined in a very effective and sophisticated sonorous diagram, that slowly unveils a style with peculiar vivacities, that makes the music of Tetarise absolutely unique and dominant.   

Almost forty-seven minutes long, Sliced Reflections has six tracks: 1)Into The Unknown; 2)Boundless; 3)Enchanted; 4)Happy Hours; 5)Golden Worlds; 6)Across Dark Space; all of them are exceedingly intense, each one with its own fantastic peculiarities. Being solemn symphonies of unimaginable and poetic beauty – that aggregates innovating qualities to the genre –, the artist really has done an excellent work on this album, as the music becomes progressively more vivacious, and displaying a degree of experimentalism and versatility that we rarely listen in artists of the genre nowadays. 

A fantastic album, with a marvelous sonorous cohesion – whose creative audacity definitely surpasses all the possible barriers that we can imagine in the genre –, the lucid and impeccable style of Tetarise is definitely unique; in fact, an undisclosed pioneer of colorful ambient generated compressive densities in the modern electronic music scene. With a powerfully suggestive and gracious sound, Sliced Reflections is wonderfully excellent all the way through, a release completely devoid of flaws and limitations. A tremendously splendorous state of the art work, whose consistent beauty and laborious competence will definitely make you an enthusiast of the artist. 


Wagner

psychedelic / chillout

Superdeep is an album released on 16 January, by Austrian psychedelic chillout sound artist Sebastian Frisch, better known under the alias Pangani. With nine tracks – 1) Jungle of Dissolution; 2) Rainbow Nosed Gorillas; 3) Mud Man; 4) Twisted Roots; 5) Tiny Temples; 6) Serious Happiness; 7) Fabric Of Time; 8) It’s Easier Dub and the hour long 9) Continuous Mix – the album is a passionate and cohesive, yet discreet and ordained fable of deeply colorful and sympathetic symphonies, that can be categorized as a fantastic psychedelic electronic music experience. 

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Despite the fact that – in an overall evaluation –, the album mostly follows the general conventions and commonalities present in the genre, the work is consistently proficient, and competently executed. The melodies are sculpted with a sincere devotion to the anatomy of the music, being imperiously dynamic, though creatively soft and convergent, and the mosaic of allegorical tonalities ascribed to the harmonies increasingly demands a sober sonorous design to perpetuate the continuous perception of its peripheral symphonies. Despite modest limitations, that makes the sound relatively homogeneous sometimes, the density and the graceful reverberations that resonates throughout the horizon of the music’s sensibilities are never excessive or superficial. The artist has carefully conceived and pragmatically delivers sensational compositions of sensitive delight, that definitely has the potential to please the genre’s main audiences. 

While you cannot expect Superdeep to be a masterpiece, at least in the absolute sense – Pangani in only rare and dispersive occasions audaciously breaks boundaries and challenges the genre’s standards, with a moderate degree of expertise, and this maybe his style –, Superdeep never disappoints either. On its best moments, the record achieves excellent results, with exceedingly beautiful harmonies that reveals a relaxed, though expansive, dilated, dilapidated and creative vitality, that fustigates the ostensible charisma that marvelously fluctuates throughout the music. 

With a style that slowly and gradually reveals some curious and evasive peculiarities, Pangani displays a relatively virtuous and colorful musical technique, that has on the majestic pulse of its vivid, intuitive and lucid artistic objectives the design of an exhilarating sonorous redemption. With a wonderful creativity that effectively projects the molecules of its splendorous dimension throughout the unlimited horizons of its fragrant and versatile musical abilities, Pangani easily overcomes the genre’s main deficiencies and limitations, to deliver to his audience a sequence of beautiful, effective and exceedingly sophisticated salutary cosmogonies, that definitely makes Superdeep a tremendously great, consistent and enjoyable work.  



Wagner

ambient / electronic

A split album between two artists from Copenhagen, Denmark, released in January 4, Wilderness – very concise, only thirty minutes long – has only four tracks. The first and the third, Rapid Eye Movement and Vinden Der Blæser, are played by Erot. The second and the fourth, Passing Through Eglinton Valley and Carlsbad Caverns, are played by Lauge. Their styles are similar, at first you really don’t feel you are listening to two different soundscape artists; nevertheless, the album is beautiful and fascinating. It displays a consistent and salutary serenity that navigates throughout the splendid and captivating glory of its sensational and vigorous musical framework.

The music in general is simple, but vividly expansive. If you close your eyes, you can easily imagine yourself in a vastly distant and everlasting snow desert – and maybe this image is fueled by the cover artwork of the album, since the sound closely associates itself with this landscape imagery. The sound gradually evolves from a solitary, dense and profound desolation, whose notes contemplates directly the horizons of the soul, in the lost vicinities of an existence that effectively displays the voracity and the fragility of the human nature, in a gracious and sensible sound that delves into the harmonies of its own poetic sensibilities. 

Vinden Der Blæser definitely became my favorite song. With a lucid, but soft intensity – primordially satisfied with the expansive beauty of its harmonious and vague, but elegant dissolutions – the graceful melodies expand slowly towards a palace of sonorous epiphanies, where a uniquely sensorial disposition of existence gives you the benefit of dreaming with the whole universe for a while. The sound is intensely poetic and fragile at the same time; the lucid consciousness of your soul expands into a dehydrated universe of imponderable calmness, where everything that you hear splendidly fulfills gracious horizons of glory, in an ambivalent placidity whose harmonies revolves around a decent exposure of originally volatile serenities. 

With an intelligent and abundant degree of creativity, Wilderness reveals itself a moderately glorious album. With an artistic grandiosity that effectively engraves the sound in a consistent parable of musical abilities, Erot & Lauge successfully consecrated a mosaic of creative virtues, that situates both artists in a graceful level of audacious authenticity, while at the same time maintaining a sensible simplicity, that literally embraces them as two innovative and spectacular underground forces of ambient music.   


Wagner