dark ambient

Dark ambient during summer? During the moment we charge the batteries in order to bridge the future winter period, we were thrown into deep dark moods by NERATERRÆ's debut album The Substance of Perception. This inner journey to future seasons (autumn and winter) was produced, mixed and mastered by the Italian Alessio Antoni (NERATERRÆ).

Alessio Antoni also received the cooperation of some of the best dark ambient artists active on this planet. The result: a bold and varied collaboration that led to one of the darkest dark ambient releases, so far (during this year). Each of the seven jet-black electronic pearls have their own style which is partly determined by the participating artists. 

The sound waves alternate with ritual and grim atmospheres, melancholic ambiance and stifling claustrophobic drones. There is not much light to be seen on this release, just a black void, like a gaping abyss, causing an inexpressible detachment from the tangible and the ruthless transformation of the self. Echoing Scars (with Flowers For Bodysnatchers) delivers with mourning whirling piano strokes a somewhat less dark atmosphere between the tracks filled with sounds of doom. 

The participating artists (in order of the tracks) are: Northaunt (Norway), Alexey Tegin from Phurpa (Russia), New Risen Throne (Italy), Flowers For Bodysnatchers (Australia), Xerxes The Dark (Iran) and Treha Sektori (France) (together on track five), Ugasanie (Belarus) and Infinexhuma (USA).

The Substance of Perception is a stunning dark ambient edition of an unbelievably high level. NERATERRÆ’s deep sounds  are the ideal companion for a long pitch black winter in hibernation. The mentioned artists are also worthwhile to give an exploratory listen (welcome to the dark ambient world). This release is also available on CD on the Bandcamp page of NERATERRÆ. The mysterious artwork was delivered by Nihil and Daria Endresen.  We were blown away by this top release!

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Patsker

space ambient / dark ambient

An album released in June by Exosphere, a sublabel of Synphaera Records, Syzygies — a record by an electronic music artist working under the pseudonym Spinnet — has seven tracks: 1) Unitary; 2) Decoherence; 3) Vicious Walks; 4) Secant; 5) Transcendence; 6) Centroid; 7) Large Scale; with very slow, sometimes somber and gradually surreal expectations, the music of Spinnet is a marvelous, though condescending, lugubrious and vertical descent into darkness. While the music is pragmatically technical, and overtly simple in its structural tonalities, the work is amazingly efficient, and definitely delivers to the audience a spectacularly dense and cohesive universe of melancholic shadows, that abruptly conceives a deleterious universe of anxious cosmogony, that stretches the expansive and diluted tissue of the sound. 

A very good work — that departs from a minimalist and very technical musical sensitivity —, Syzygies is an album whose sonority relies mostly on the hazardous atmosphere created by the artist, that discreetly delivers a style that psychologically plays with the listener, in a very intelligent perspective. With a more simple, but expressively lucid style, that grows from within its own introspective darkness, this work is a primordially sensible, refined and sinister musical effort, whose elementary conceptions and creative urgencies will easily captivate enthusiasts of the genre. 

While the sound promotes a growing uneasiness within the listener's mind, its grotesque, but elegant nature progressively saturates the space on which its bizarre, but very original organic style is conceived. Delivering a space-oriented paradigm that aspires to the higher and more genuine qualities of the genre, Syzygies definitely is an album that stands out by the virtues of its eccentric features and sinister uniqueness, although in a way the sound is very homogeneous, despite displaying in several passages a brilliant versatility that revolves around pragmatic and cohesive musical tonalities. 

Despite the fact that the album is relatively concise, Syzygies is a primordial and very beautiful work of art. With an intricate atmosphere — that really circulates over the dense universe of its own sinister demise —, the dehydrated darkness that comes out of this marvelous sonorous conjuncture of pervasive and dispersive symphonies defines a new creative system for the genre, that discreetly showcases a more proficient and somber method of musical sensibilities, designed to rearrange dark ambient elements in a more enigmatic, plural and cohesive consistency.   


Wagner

dark ambient

Julien Lacroix, the man behind this enigmatic dark ambient project, spent the summer of 2018 in French Guiana where he was baffled by the forces of nature and their effect on human civilization. With visions of overgrown buildings, mass hysteria and folklore legends, Lacroix went back to France to write and record the new Moloch Conspiracy full-length.

Titled 'Baclou', this new album is a swirling piece of dark ambient, containing eight tracks. Formed only in 2017, Moloch Conspiracy delivers a surprisingly experienced sound, one which sounds mythical, ominous and emotional. Something within this set of soundscapes and drones  tells me that Lacroix is somewhat of a perfectionist. 'Irridescent Lights' opens the album in perfect dark ambient tradition. You could easily use it to accompany your horror stories and fans of acts like Raison 'd Etre, Troum or Inade will certainly appreciate this. 'Bagne's Nightmares' is a first highlight, a torpid piece of dark ambient which somehow comes with some sort of pulsating drive.

Another highlight is title track 'Baclou'. It also seems to be a fan favorite on the bandcamp page and for a good reason too. This is a haunting piece of music, so narrative that it drags you down into one of those dark folklore legends. 'In The Forest' follows that example. With this one it's not so hard to close your eyes and imagine yourself wandering through ancient and haunted woods. Judging from the impending overtone of this track, not many of us would survive this adventure. The album ends with another highlight, but perhaps this record is just full of dark ambient highlights. Lingering soundscapes, eerie drones, sounds of nature trying to strangle you and often threatening percussion. If you are into those elements, 'Baclou' is a must-add to your already impressive collection. 


​Serge

dark ambient / space ambient

Exosphere Music

With four extensive tracks – Sentinel, Sweet Oscillation, Gem Float and Love Prism – Sonic Being is the most recent album by an artist known by the exotic alias of Lingua Lustra, released by Exosphere, a sub-label of Synphaera Records. An interesting album, whose dense atmosphere highlights the consistence of imperiously diluted harmonies, Sonic Being is primarily a very dilated and expansive work, where sound departs from the cosmogony of a cautious, ubiquitous and dark resonance, even playing with an ostensibly graceful, but fragmented degree of minimalism. 

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A delightful work of art, that plays with the psychological perceptions of the sound, an imminent sense of anguish, doom and demise is exceedingly highlighted from the beginning, and the record works mostly on this disruptive zone of dark and lugubrious expectation. With an ostensibly protuberant void – filled with the vortex of a voluble density –, the artist expands the apex of its sonorous gravity to involve in the horizon of its melodic virtues the wider possibilities of the resounding dynamic tissues present in the periphery of the melodies. 

With an elegant and calm atmosphere, Sonic Being deepens the crystal skies of the music’s dynamic zone, to seek a point of convergence between the harmonies, where no intrusive elements can be inserted. As the sound becomes exceedingly vivacious – although concomitantly homogeneous –, the artist’s style progresses to embark on a colossal wave of serenity, that can never be properly satisfied, though the diligence upon which its impenetrable integrity is conceived unveils a sound where the reason becomes the primary element of an artistic antagonism, that evaluates the dissidence of its own structural pragmatism.   

Definitely, a very sensitive album, whose sound plays intelligently with the senses, Sonic Being is a calm, proficient and elegant sonorous rapture, that will take you to a fascinating journey throughout the vastness of the universe. A record that brings to the audience the best the genres of space and dark ambient has to offer, the artist displays a very singular, coherent and meticulous style, that is sensible to its own creative susceptibilities, delivering a set of colorful emotional tonalities on the crest of its versatile mosaic of everlasting lethargies, that gradually converges to a vivacious realm of splendorous sensibilities. Nevertheless, its musical atmosphere flourishes – despite its desolate captivity –, with the final result being a relatively fantastic work of art that moves from one point of the universe to another, without ever leaving its somnolent and reclusive place of origin.

 
Wagner

dark ambient / space ambient 

Exosphere Music

Presence is a dark ambient music album, released in May 14, by Chris Russell, through Exosphere, a sub-label of Synphaera Records. With a dense, but distinctly protuberant atmosphere, and a very oblique sonorous layout, you definitely feel yourself absorbed into another dimension, where your sensitivities collide softly with a renitent, but tempestuously aggressive doom, that is ready to take you to an indefinite abyss of sinister captivity. A spectacular work of art whose profound layers derive its strength from a substratum of dispersive harmonies, Presence has on its discreet, but exceedingly pungent essence an expression of its marvelous grandiosity and elegance, where the excellence of silent virtues punctuate a scale of resonant majesty, that exposes a world of doomed expectations, solely conceived from the restless configuration of a musically devised sinister perspective.   

Sixty-eight minutes long, Presence has seven very intense and primordially diluted tracks: 1) Amber Clouds; 2) Dark Matter; 3) Charon Base; 4) Presence; 5) Aphelion; 6) Teide; 7) Planemo Unfolding; unveiling in the best perspective possible the true essence and the most impeccable qualities that the genre inherited from the greatest geniuses of dark ambient, this album follows with a marvelous degree of honor and fidelity the lugubrious paths previously conceived by the likes of Kammarheit, Svartsinn and Ugasanie, with a formidable degree of competence, diligence and groundbreaking artistry. With melodies that dive deep into a fugacious ocean of everlasting melancholy, effectively creating an eternal night of frivolous despair, Presence gradually releases a consistent darkness over the physiology of its own musical realm, nurturing a fragile fraternity with a horrendous promise of fear, that is imperiously sidelined by a contiguous, lethargic and mysterious symphony of agony. 

With a pungent sound whose dilated layers rescues its own pretensions towards the funereal emptiness of a dying infinity, the sound prevalent in this album stays in the periphery of its own destructible anguish, effervescing in the extraordinary rhythmic dissolutions of a visceral plague the drastic urgencies of its own susceptible volatilities. With a stable surface of harmonies, though, the sound is also very tranquil, pristine and almost palpable, as the irreplaceable navigations of its inflexible anatomy dilacerates the pervasiveness of its delusional tonalities, abundant in somnolent hypnotism, that inadvertently brings on its apparent calmness the mortuary afflictions of an instigating anxiety, generated by the inherently consistent disposition of the sound. 

A great gift to all dark ambient lover’s out there, Presence feels as a truly genuine composition of a restless creative mind, eager to drive you to a solitary and desolate world of gloom and isolation, where a reality entirely conceived in black, white and grey is all that you will ever have. A sound that brings together a sordid coalition of precipices – manifested as a symphony of laborious sadness – that will make you feel permanently lost in a parallel world of bizarre omniscience, elaborated as if reality itself is an experimental movie of E. Elias Merhige.


Wagner

post rock / post metal

noise rock / jazz / experimental

doom / sludge

psychedelic / doom / stoner rock

ambient

house / techno / electronic

dark ambient

ambient / experimental

electronic / downtempo

bandcamp

heavy metal

black metal / death metal

ambient

Audiobulb

​Serge

drone / ambient / dark ambient

Eighth Tower Records

Here at Merchants Of Air, we have been using the term "drone" for quite a long time. Oddly, this got us plenty of attention from drone hobbyists. You know, people who use those little aircrafts to invade other people's privacy. Here in our little corner of the internet, "drone" means something completely different.

As Wikipedia describes: "Drone-music  is a subgenre of minimal music that emphasizes the use of sustained sounds, notes, or tone clusters – called drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy audio programs with relatively slight harmonic variations throughout each piece." 

Who else than Raffaele Pezzella to curate an outstanding drone compilation like this one. For this album, he successfully attempted to showcase an overview of today's drone music scene. All twelve tracks here roam into these gloomy underground areas, some heavy and intense, others brooding and immersive. Yes, a drone album, but one that showcases the immense variation within this scene. Belgian long running act Ah Cama-Sotz has gotten the opportunity to open the compilation and he does so with an excellent dark ambient track. Satori's contribution is harsh, noisy and rough while Kammarheit does something gloomy with minimalism.

The vocal drones of Ashtoreth immediately pull you into his sonic habitat. This must be one of his eeriest tracks. But if you want eerie, you'll also adore 'Awash' by Daimon, another piece that excels in minimalism. That's five tracks into this compilation and already a wide variety of drone music, probably more varied than you would expect. Stefan Klaverda's 'Ambient Earthquakes' leaves the darkness and walks into brighter territories whole Sonologyst worships the odd and mysterious. I'll leave the other ones up to you to discover. All I will say is that none of them will disappoint the avid drone fan.

So, drones, minimalism and ambient, that's pretty much what you'll get when you get your hands on a copy of this outstanding compilation. I guess that's the most minimalistic thing I could write about it. Recommended? Obviously.


​Serge

dark ambient / electronic / noise

Well, time to dive into darker territories and what better way to do that than with a haunting release by dark ambient label Sombre Soniks. For this one, we go to France, where we meet the Arcaïde project. According to the project the album "takes us on an inward journey contemplating the two inseparable and indispensable phases: fire and ice, yin and yang, Solve & Coagula".

Musically, that concept results in overwhelming pieces of music, where dark ambient soundscapes meet intense noise and industrial patterns, all coming with a fierce atmosphere and dressed in sheer darkness.

The album consists of two main parts, "Solve" and "Coagula". Each of them is a collection of four tracks, or parts if you will. The whole thing opens in an intense and crushing matter. This is dark ambient noise with the audacity and atmosphere of black metal. "Solve Part 2" brings me back to the glory days of Cold Meat Industry. "Part 3" is minimal and gloomy while "Part 4" drives on industrial electronics, pounding beats and rhythmic ritual noise, complete with the harsh, distorted vocals. Impressive.

The second half of the album, "Coagula" opens with a long dark ambient set, something impending and mystifying. But this act, too, quickly adapts elements from noise and industrial in order to evolve into a baffling whirlpool of sounds and noises before once again toning down towards calmer areas. No, it's not an easy album but I am quite sure that adepts of harsh ambient will adore this rough and gritty piece of work. 


​Serge

dark ambient / experimental

Almost a years ago, the cooperation album 'Pilgrim' was released. On this album, Ashtoreth and Grey Malkin (The Hare And The Moon) opened a new sonic journey, one that was a lot more than the sum of both solo acts. 'Pilgrim' was brilliant, and when I heard about a follow-up, my heart jumped for joy, so to speak.
Now that follow-up is coming closer. Its title is 'Hermit' and it seems to dig deeper into combined talents of these two artists. This is not just a dark ambient cooperation, this is dark, haunting and cinematic music, something that can put its foot next to the greatest in the dark and cinematic regions. 

Opener 'The God in the Fields' (with additional throat singing and violin  by Orryelle Defenestrate) is already a surprising tune. In stead of slowly fading in, this track begins with drums and hints of chaos. Gradually however, the whole things blooms open into an immersive an narrative adventure, driving on voices, drones and violins. 'The Anchorite Dreams in Silver' is a baffling piece of work, bringing even Godspeed! You Black Emperor to mind. Those violins again, I guess. Yet, the entire track is a beautiful exploration of ritual sounds. Most of the tracks are. I'm getting more and more impressed by the minute, to be absolutely honest.

The thing is, I know Ashtoreth and I'm very acquainted with his music. There was a time when he was simply unable to surprise me. 'Pilgrim' was a step into a different direction and 'Hermit' completely shatters my expectation. These are not songs. These are shortfilms without images, every single one of them. Where the previous album was a great coop, this new one is a statement. Hell, I'm even wondering if I should use the term "masterpiece".

'The Veil' is perhaps the most minimalist on the album. It's a soothing yet gloomy droner that floats freely through my speakers. 'The Covenant of Branch and Stone' is harsher, with a grim atmosphere and eerie spoken word samples. Speaking of grim, the bells at the beginning of closer 'Hermit' are downright sinister. Yet, in all, this is an excellent follow-up to 'Pilgrim', one that every fan of dark and ominous music should check out.


​Serge

dark ambient

Tipi Token

Fortuitously Sysselmann’s release got under our radar together with the Tipi Token Records promo of Arne Borgan. Tipi Token Records is a Norwegian label founded in 2015 focused on ambient and related experimental genres. This debut album was released in October 2016. With pleasure we took the time for a deep listening journey into the mysterious and dark world of Sysselmann.

The Northern Chronicles was performed and recorded by Thomas Narverud (aka Sysselmann) as a tribute to the collective consciousness of the northern parts of Norway. Imagine the rough Norwegian coast line with its enormous fjords and dangerous sea. The first track,  Coastal Fairway Northbound, takes the listener immediately to that scene. The horns are blowing.

Thrilling soundscapes with field recordings of waves and seagulls under ritual drumming create dreamy images of Viking ships sounding their foghorns. Sharp icy winds on the track Stormwatch carry the cold atmospheres of endless winters. The crunching wood of the drakkars sound dangerously under pressure of wind and water.  The Northern Chronicles album has a balanced rituality and convey a haunting darkness. Transmigration and Juniper Tree Song do lift this release to higher standards in the ritual dark ambient genre. Enigmatic soundscapes evoke unknown emotions and could even frighten some Nordic gods behind the dark clouds of Walhalla. 

The drones are submerged in esoteric and meditative choruses. It felt like moving on Stygian waters reflecting white shades of doom. The more we listened to this album the more we got hypnotized. Plains of Passage and Journey Across the Ruins contain some more experimental and industrial reflections. The profound droning on the last two tracks end this awesome expedition. 
The field recordings on this
album were captured over a two year period. After seven winter storms in as many days, the idea of The Northern Chronicles was born.  With this birth, the light disappeared in the evening dusk of the magical Norwegian coastal landscapes. Sysselmann enchanted us with this beautiful obscurity and is more than welcome to deliver more of those illusionary creations in the future.

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Patsker