Dark Music Review – Nyarlathotep
Review Written By Casey Douglass
A 190 minute dark soundscape album recorded by 25 ambient artists to pay tribute to H.P. Lovecraft.
Field recordings from the deepest dark corners of 4 continents. Dusty tapes out of forgotten archives. Strings through crackling amplifiers and distorted drone combine into a sea of pitch black.
Nyarlathotep is a manipulative being in the Lovecraftian Mythos. Unlike Cthulhu, or Azathoth, he delights in cruelty and deception. Causing madness is more important than destruction to him. Smell the burning embers as you kneel outside the sunken temple before Nyarlathotep. Feel the raspy touch of the faceless pharaoh as he leads you to the ancient Pyramid. Hear his inhuman summoning call to gods beyond reality.
Ah
Mr Lovecraft, where would the world be without your own particular
brand of creeping horror? Probably still in the current state it
currently resides, but with less tentacles I guess. As always,
anything that takes Lovecraft’s creations as inspiration, be it
audio, video or game, instantly has my interest. When it comes down
to music however, it just might be one of the most visceral ways of
creating that sense of the eldritch that Lovecraft himself so
excelled at. Nyarlathotep is a dark ambient album that uses
the creative juices of no less than 25 ambient artists, working and
bouncing sound off each other, going ever deeper into what
Nyarlathotep might sound like or embody.
Nyarlathotep
consists of 3 tracks, all around an hour long, give or take five or
ten minutes here and there. For the most part, each track is a
quieter visit to the dark ambient genre; plenty of echoing notes and
deep rumblings that, while prominent, don’t particularly loom with
any great threat or menace. I guess what I'm saying is that it is a
pretty slow burner, the languid strings and electronic creakings and
trills creating an undeniably dark space, but one in which you can
let the echoes carry you away, rather than anything too intense.
That
is quite a simplistic view and doesn't quite take into account the
host of other sounds and tempos that emerge as you make your way
through the tracks. There is a variety of chant-like vocals, some
deep and satanic, others high and angelic. Static and distortion
play their parts too; a static-fuzzy sound becoming a beat at one
point, or later dancing around the soundscape like some digital
insect fluttering its wings. Oh and there are chimes and bells and
other metallic sounds, along with distant thumps and shufflings, I
mustn't forget the shufflings.
Highlights
for me were the distorted lightening strikes that emerge about eleven
minutes into track two, and a bit later in the same track, the dark
soundscape that features the sounds of someone breathing as they seem
to be exploring wherever they have found themselves. I also enjoyed
the metallic clattering that begins track three, a harsh
electro-drone rising, soon to be joined by voices that either sound
pleading or worshipping.
I
enjoyed the time I spent listening to Nyarlathotep, although
for me, there is a tentacled beast in the room that I haven’t
addressed yet, and that is a previous Cryo Chamber Collaboration that
goes by the name of Cthulhu. Cthulhu really blew me
away, I think maybe because the soundscapes were more active.
Nyarlathotep is a smooth, dark listening experience, but it
didn’t get its hooks into me in the way that Cthulhu did.
I’m going to give Nyarlathotep 4/5, but if you like
your dark ambient at the smoother, more introspective end of the
spectrum, you could easily add at least half a point to that score.
Visit the Nyarlathotep
page on Bandcamp here for more information, and check out one of the tracks from the album below:
I was given a free
copy of this album to review.
Album Title:
Nyarlathotep
Artist: Cryo Chamber
Collaboration
Label: Cryo Chamber
Released:
September 27, 2016
