ambient / dark folk / cinematic

So, if the first three tracks of a four track EP already remind me of acts like Nick Cave, Penitent, Raison d'ètre, Aphex Twin and Biosphere, I guess it's alright to call this a pretty damn varied release. And then comes 'Synchronism', a goosebumps inducing dark pop anthem with vocals by Raya. In all, '...Unfolds' indicates a more than welcome return for a highly exciting ambient project. Recommended? Dûh!

alternative rock / punk / grunge

thrash metal

dark ambient / drone

Signora Ward Records

drone / ambient / soundtrack

drone / ambient

bandcamp

industrial / dark ambient / noise

HGM Music

drone / dark ambient

dark ambient

Mortar Devotions is a collaboration between the two members, Manuele Frau and Nicholas Pucciarelli, of the experimental ambient project Nona Et Decima and Aleksei Tsernjavski alias Огни. Operazione Piovra: The Lead Chronicles is inspired by one of the darkest pages of Italian history. The five tracks are a soundtrack reflecting  the period of social and political turmoil (the war between the mafia and the Italian government) that lasted from the late 1960s until the late 1980s. These times were also known as the years of lead.

The Helsinki based trio uses a cinematic approach in their compositions. We can’t deny that a somehow claustrophobic 70s feeling is created in the music. The ambient sounds are darkened with noisy and industrial inputs conceiving a weird, dirty and old-fashioned atmosphere. Although the music on this recording is about a very dark period, the sounds are less dark and sometimes tripping, compared to the inspiring era. 

With the varied tensions and the use of electronic effects  Mortar Devotions sounds more experimental than dark (ambient). They hold on to the mysterious ambiance creating a strange elaborating deep listening trip. Highlight of the album is Part IV where post rock and electronica fuse into a spooky riddle of sonic vibes.  

The more subdued sound of Mortar Devotions has a welcome escaping effect still holding on to the darker sides of the spectrum.  This is Dark(er) Ambient eased with experimental inputs, percussion and industrial fragments. Operazione Piovra: The Lead Chronicles is a slow but absorbing cinematic work that keeps the listener focused.

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Patsker

dark ambient

The collective Nam-Khar consist of several artists from all over Europe and has been releasing work on regular base the last decade. Sur Chöd is the second release of Nam-Khar on The Dutch quality label Winter-Light. When you look at the names of the artists who cooperated on this release, you can’t have any doubt about the artistic competency of this album.

With deep rituality the collective’s leader Konchog Gyaltsen spreads the inertia of the subconscious awareness. The slow ritual tracks breath out death, depression, desolation and other underworld emotions hidden behind the human masquerade. Mystical drones and minimal soundscapes are guided by percussive instruments, evoking transformative views and feelings. The moods on Sur Chöd exhale transgressions of the daily life and it’s emotions.

Sur Chöd is not an easy piece, the music and atmosphere transcend the thinking brain. This is a profound sound art work that prompts the mind and body to search for the deeper meaning of everything in life. The repetitive percussion combined with the dark electronic vibes gives a transcending feeling of peaceful tranquility. But darkness lurks around every sound Nam-Khar produces, imprisoning the listener into an extraterrestrial temple of sounds and thoughts.

On Sur Chöd, Nam-Khar are: Boenke, Gossmann, Gyaltsen, Martinegou, Prochir. The track
T´ew rang is a collaboration with Akoustik Timbre Frekuency. Robin Storey (Rapoon) was responsible for the mastering of this deep touching piece of ritual dark ambient. Our favourite on this album is the enigmatic track Gangs chen mdzod Inga. During Covid-19 times Sur Chöd can be your guide to another destination in life, an instrumental mind fucker that opens the gates of the abstruse ritual dark ambient world. 

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Patsker

drone / dark ambient / ritual

Belgian ambient guru Ashtoreth is one of the most prolific acts in today's ritual ambient music. Several people know him as gentle and friendly Peter but his transformation into the mystic entity that is Ashtoreth is quite often mindboggling. One moment you're enjoying a nice conversation and a glass of beer with him, the next moment he grabs you by the soul and transports you to worlds and dimensions unknown. I think that is pretty fascinating. While his solo works are dark ambient gemstones, his collaborations have become unique sonic journeys in which both Ashtoreth and his respective collaborator seem to rise above themselves. 

And that is definitely the case on 'Throne of Astrŏarchē', his collaboration album with New Zealand`s one-woman ritual ambient/dark folk act for Chthonic worship and meditation Chthonia. These four tracks do not restrict themselves to the borders of this planet, not even the reality we think we live in. Opener 'Asir' mainly drives on ritual vocal performances, creating a dark and eerie atmosphere. Throat singing, whispering, chanting; all purely human voices creating something which is not earthbound, that is a stunning accomplishment if you ask me.

But then comes 'Nehalennia', the longest and most narrative piece of music on the album. This is a sonic journey second to none. It's nearly impossible to properly describe this dark ambient anthem without travelling to places unknown. Deep, pulsating drones support Chthonia's ritual voice in one of the most captivating ways I've ever heard. You can feel this music pierce your consciousness, face your demons and battle your ego. Meditation music for the dark minded, that would be a perfect line to describe it.

You know, I'm not going to write much about the other two tracks. I think those paragraphs would just become a repetition of the things I already mentioned, of words like "Ritual, Out of this world, meditation", along with a number of "brilliants" and "perfects". If you need a solid dark ambient album you can either grab a Lustmord CD or this epic masterpiece. Heck, I've heard artists rise above themselves before but I've never heard artists lifting the listener above him/herself but that is exactly what happens here. 

'Throne of Astrŏarchē' is a perfect dark ambient/ritual ambient album. Period!


​Serge 

dark ambient

Last year Alessio Antoni surprised us with his awesome dark ambient debut The Substance of Perception (Cyclic Law). Less than twelve months later he is back with another pitch black dark ambient attack. Inspired by ten paintings NERATERRÆ conveys the reflected emotions of the artworks into murky drone landscapes. Each track (like on the debut album) got also a musical contribution from an artist from the scene.

The first track, The Last Abjurer (feat. Phelios) is inspired by Zdzislaw Beksinski’s AA72 and blows us immediately into a dark mysterious world filled with deep spooky drones. This breath taking piece opens the surrealistic dark ambient world of NERATERRÆ’s Scenes From The Sublime. Alessio Antoni chases with this album the symbolism of paintings by Dali, Bosch, Beksinski and many more artists. He succeeds by far to capture the beauty of darkness and the enigmatic content of the painters works. 

Scenes From The Sublime shows a  spooky and dystopian world created with arcane soundscapes and effects pushing the dark ambient genre further into dour and oneiric atmospheres. The contributions and ideas by Alphaxone, Dödsmaskin, Leila Abdul-Rauf, Mount Shrine, Phelios, Phragments, Shrine, Xerxes The Dark and the ritual vocals of George Zafiriadis from Martyria and Yann Hagimont from Cober Ord bulldoze this album up to a possible classic dark ambient album. 

Drenched in the sweat of dazzling artworks, this unearthly music projects a vantablack atmosphere. Scenes From The Sublime is a dark ambient masterpiece where a beam of light has no chance of survival. Without being flippant, this is a symbolic album of the genre.

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Patsker

dark ambient

The haunting sounds of ∆ø∆ (DØD) have a long history. Attila Iváncsik is the Hungarian bedroom artist behind ∆ø∆. He started to create dark clinical sounds under the name Prosektor in 2009 with some very interesting CDr and digital releases (Mental Illness and Mors Omnia Solvit). Parallel with ∆ø∆ the Budapest based artist puts his creativity in Twilight Of Emptiness, an on nature inspired ambient project with a full upcoming release  in 2020.

We have been following  Attila Iváncsik from the beginning of his musical career. With the four track EP Lost Souls Of The River he amazes us with spooky dark ambient structures. The tracks contain deep dark vibes spawn from eerie drones and soundscapes. ∆ø∆ produces dark cavernous tunes with a ritual edge. The music has depth and traps the listener in a cinematic atmosphere where doom and death are near. With a concept story about the beast, Lost Souls Of The River can be interpreted in many ways.

The threatening grim drones growl like a pack of sleeping wolves and are drenched in mysterious sounds. We are overwhelmed by the irresistible darkness this release withholds. ∆ø∆ finished Lost Souls Of The River in detail, adding samples and macabre effects to strengthen the obscurity on this awesome dark ambient release. ∆ø∆ already announced that the sequel Allegory Of Death is soon to be released. We are ready for some more dark sounds from Hungary. Lost Souls Of The River is available on digital format and limited edition tape on the artist’s Bandcamp page. 

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Patsker

dark ambient

The third release of  Jinthra captured the personal mythopoetic  background of this dark/ritual ambient artist. Jinthra is the solo project of Jindřich Spilka who is also active with other underground names like Druhá Smrt and A Most Accursed. During the darkest days of winter, between Samhain 2019 and Imbolc 2020 (a pagan cleansing feast during the first two days of February), Jindřich Spilka performed his sound  manifestation and recorded his solemn ceremony titled Wotanist Affair.

The four growling tracks are based on a wall of distorted and slow guitars spreading a ritual swarthiness filled with a deep cohesion of thoughts. Mythical voices and screams awaken an energetic wave of darkness from the unconscious of the artist. The soundscapes add an eerie tinge to the result of the revealed constructions. Jindra’s DIY rite feels like a transforming communication between several dimensions of the inner self. 

Track titles like Garma (warmth in Hindi), Notschrei (cry for help in German), Odinvokation and Ragnarok were chosen to introduce the meaning of the deep sounding and flesh cutting atmosphere. Jindřich Spilka lives in the shade of the vast Czech forests, not only receiving its inspiration but also perspires the call of nature with the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, Guido von List and Peryt Shou.

Wotanist Affair provokes as a deep listening session but the moment you start to understand the communication and the hidden emotions, your thoughts will be chopped into pieces and prepared for a new afflatus. Don’t say we didn’t warn you for this mind blowing sound art.

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Patsker

dark ambient

Eighth Tower Records

Our first contact with the Tehran based electronic artist was with his appearance on the outstanding compilation Anthology of Persian Experimental Music. In the slipstream of two other Iranian dark ambient projects Xerxes The Dark and Alphaxone, Reza Solatipour put himself in the international dark ambient spotlights with his first full release called The Gate.

Darkness surrounded us from the first second we tuned into this album. The grim soundscapes are etched in deep mystical layers transmitting spiritual echoes from the long history of Persia. Reza Solatipour knows how to hold the tension in the varied tracks. The drones whisper like sharp grains of sand originated from the long forgotten temples of Persia and scratching the human soul with  secretive sound structures. Lustmord was the first name that came to our mind to compare Reza Solatipour’s compositions.  

Producing music made a powerful comeback in Iran with a generation of young composers (in several genres) reconnecting with the period before the Revolution and the Iranian diaspora. Although the creativity of Iranian musicians has reached a new area, everything still happens in a grizzled and doubtful underground zone. 

The dark ambient fans will love this quality album containing dreamy expressions and arcane ideas from a darker kind of world. We are impressed by this excellent production that was released on several formats in November 2019. Hopefully Reza Solatipour has more darkness in his mind for much haunting compositions in the future. The more underground can a recording like this be?

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Patsker

dark rock

Nothing new under those vast Scandinavian skies – yes! Nothing boring in the wide open spaces – yes! Nocturnalia are a good example that a mix of Rainbow, Deep Purple, the 69 Eyes combined with a singer who clearly likes Bruce Dickinson never gets boring. For we have heard those things so often before we can clearly identify the roots – always a great thing for every fan(atic) as he can display his knowledge. However, there is something else to that mix that lies beneath the obvious and that is some good and clever songwriting because we must remember – copying is one thing but taking lessons from idols is another. Nocturnalia definitely follow the second line and we can take singer Linus Ekermo as an example here: He knows his Bruce, he knows his Dio but he never dares to simply copy them, he adds little singular characteristics once in a while, for example in “Winter Hymn” when his (nearly) spoken word is a great atmospheric moment - “Frost be the sign of this lost ending year /  Darkness embrace me for winter draws near” words and phrases heard before but combined with a sound reminiscent of the wind of uilleann pipes and a second (at the beginning nearly inaudible) vocal line we are still drawn to it and keep on spinning “III Winter”. 

hard rock / classic rock

Wooden Earth (look at that band name – you already see the green smoke rising in the desert) are to release their new track “Fangs” on December 13th. The Dallas-based duo consisting of guitarist Devin Moreno and drummer/vocalist Griffin Thomas will release their debut full length next year and are currently touring their ….. off. No new witches’ brew in their mix of two similar genres, but their play with dynamics is definitely worth lending your ear if you like Red Fang’s ferociousness, QOTSA’s pop appeal and some scruffy vocals to accompany all of that. They throw in a riff that is really genre-like but their dynamics draws you in and the small kicks from the side in form of a sharp noisy lick keep you going just as much as the 60s style psychedelic organ in the background which keeps the atmosphere light and tight. Here you go, Stoner fans, you might have another band to follow! What a name anyway!

metalcore

My media player sometimes plays a trick on me and doesn’t enlist the tracks in the right order but reverses them, so that the last track is played first. It did that when I started listening to Moonreich’s recent EP Wormgod, and thus the first thing I heard was “Broken” and the first vocals I heard were “If you want control without any pain / How long will you suffer? / How long will you reign?” My mind racing, where had I, what did they, whom had they….  and then memory retrieved the wanted information – it’s a cover of a Depeche Mode-song! No, nothing worrisome about that cover but well, the rest is solid work. A lot of grindy-metalcore, blastbeats, solid screaming gutturals, some quick and harsh turns, a few moments reminiscent of Slipknot (supposedly a major influence) and some posty-swirling guitar loops. A solid Metalcore band doing some solid Post-Metal songs but being unable to hide their roots. A good band to start your summer festival day with, but well …if it wasn’t for that Depeche Mode-cover!

dub doom

Ever wondered what it would sound like if Godflesh emphasized the metal side a bit more and a bit dirtier? Less sterile and less dubby? With a bit less verve and some more doomy gloom? Then you might find yourself drawn to Blackwood, an electro-doom-metal-project headed by Italian artist and composer Eraldo Bernocchi who – via Subsound Records has just released his new EP “Of Flies” with the help of vocalist Emilia Moncayo and a lot of samples, for example the urgent screams “Conductor we have a problem! Press emergency!” taken from a YouTube-video filmed a few years ago, when a man ran around in an American subway screaming these words all the time. The songs are like a descent into the hell of the human psyche, one does not want to listen because of the grittiness of the songs but it it somehow impossible to stop because there might be another even more sensational sound or sample or scream just around the corner of this dirty wall of sound. And just before the finger hits the button he calms it down again and then surrounds the ears with some soothing parts and ethereal moments. But the dirt is always just one step away. A great introduction into a genre some people might never have imagined. Or never wanted to imagine. 

dark ambient / edm / house

“Always on my mind”. Elvis. His late years. A classic. Always recognizable. Always? No, not as in always always, because as Ghostboy shows with his version, starting out like a desert slo-mo-acoustic guitar version then turning into slow ambient song, even a song we have all heard a trillion times can be hard to recognize even though he sticks to the original lyrics. This song was my reason to listen to the new EP by Ghostboy released on and for Halloween and thus aptly titled “Disgusting”. Four songs revolving around the themes lost love, death, loneliness and ghosts are presented here by the electronica artist, who combines burbling dream-pop with dark electronica parts or classical house elements and sometimes garners them with an interesting detail, like the aforementioned acoustic guitar. The only fault in the EP: The cover doesn’t totally fit in with the others, even though it is quite an original track, but its lyrical mood is so different and furthermore because of said western-intro. Maybe he should choose a real Halloween classic for such a themed release – my suggestion: “The Boy with the Arab Strap”. Otherwise, it becomes clear where Ghostboy comes from and where he’s headed as he stays immensely authentic. 

Thorsten

experimental / electronic / dark ambient / ambient / noise 

Nostalgie De La Boue

The world is all that is​.​.. is the most recent release by German electronic underground experimental noise artist Hans Castrup. With six tracks — The concept of sinking, Popular imagination, Full of used notes, Paradox difference, Clarification of geometry and Upon a hill —, on this work, like his previous albums, Hans continues to dive deep into a realm of lugubrious, melancholic and sinister sound experiences, where he clearly heads towards a stylistic direction of impious, responsive, nihilist and fatalist demise. Each and every album released by Hans Castrup seems to be the perfect soundtrack for a H.P. Lovecraft horror story. 

Already in the first track, the dense, epic and monumental The concept of sinking, we clearly see that the artist — deliberately or not — establishes his creative efforts towards a prominently dark ambient musical cosmogony. With pulsating, almost afflictive sonorous reverberations, the sensitive pluralism that emanates from the expansive and digressive agonies that subtlety comes out of these tracks certainly makes this album one of the darkest in the artist's discography. 

Nevertheless, there is also a lighter side in the music — albeit ostensibly dispersive —, that sounds as a more discreet, reasonable, proverbial uneasiness allocated in the background, that ocasionally flirts with our projective sensibilities, gracefully establishing an harmonious pattern that can be as decisively obscure as it is delightfully stimulating. 

The music gradually reveals itself as it is: as complex — in the darker depths of its relentless and dissolute darkness —, as it is majestically simple and objective, in the way it calmly delivers its pungent and uneventful dimension of poingnant mortality smoothly to the listener. Just as impressive is Hans' remarkable ability to progressively reinvent his music with more diluted elements, while never losing his virtuous and graceful sonorous identity. 

With the conception of an exceedingly dense, cohesive and robust musical atmosphere, it looks like Hans Castrup has crafted The world is all that is​.​.. as a pervasive parallel dimension destitute of acessible colorful sensibilities, whose mandatory elements are all indebted to a relentless and abrasive sonorous tissue, made entirely of an unforgiving, infinite and ruthless demise. 

As the perfect sonorous background for a surreal hallucinatory black and white alternate reality — like the ones shown in old sixties television anthology series like The Twilight Zone and One Step Beyond —, the music conceived on this marvelous album by Hans Castrup transports us to a whole different, more diluted, arbitrary and conspicuous diagram of existence, where the fugacious ephemeralities of life seems dormant, because they were never what they seemed to be, in the first place. 

Your sensitivities will be all confused, before they would be entirely configured in a completely different sonorous perception, diametrically opposite to what you had expected. In the end, The world is all that is​.​..  is a fantastic descent into a world of gloom, solitude and demise, without any possibilities to return. 


Wagner