My Dark Ambient Album The Miasmic Bridge is Out Now!
I just released my second dark ambient album, The Miasmic Bridge, over on Bandcamp. This one is themed around the occult and is also free. The album description from the Bandcamp page says more:
A perpetually lonely person embraces the occult as a means to open up a whole new realm of connection.
The endeavour takes years and culminates in three spirit communication sittings, held on three consecutive evenings.
After the last of these, the person never attempts to reach out to the other side again, as like most connections, not everything that passes in each direction is to be wholly desired, or even trusted.
Loneliness has its charms. It’s certainly safer most of the time...
These tracks feature subtle, smooth, soul-scraping drones that sit uneasily at the threshold between the mind and the spirit.
If you decide to check it out, there are free Bandcamp codes on the store page if you'd like to add it to your Bandcamp library. You can also find my previous album, Deep Space Impingement, which is also free and has recently received a very generous review from The Dungeon in Deep Space.
Dark Ambient Review:
Dissolving into Solitary Landscapes
Review By Casey
Douglass
Humans being forced to
live underground due to some catastrophic event is always an
intriguing theme; the experience of being held in a kind of
artificial cosiness by the miles of rock around them and the
technology that supports them. A notion that often goes hand in hand
with it though, is the idea of someone wanting to return to the
surface, even if it means suffering, misery and certain death. Dronny
Darko and G. M. Slater’s dark ambient album Dissolving into
Solitary Landscapes is rooted in just such a desire.
As is becoming a habit
with me and Cryo Chamber releases, I can’t help but gawp at the
album artwork before even mentioning the music itself. A blocky,
angular black megastructure stretches into the murky depths, the only
splash of colour the smeared white glass of what seem to be viewing
pods or some kind of airlock. According to the album description, the
weak light cast from somewhere above appears to be purely artificial,
so any thoughts of glimpsing natural light through a cracked fissure
on high seem to be quite mute. A moody and monochrome scene, but I
have to admit, I’d happily go on a tour around such a location, as
long as I could leave at some point. For me, this sets up a pleasing
kinship with the hinted at protagonist of the album.
Below, I’ve looked at
three of the tracks that stood out to me the most:
The opening track, The
Infinity Bell Part 1, sets the scene nicely. It opens with a slow,
sonorous chiming, one that’s framed by the sound of muted distant
impacts, or the clunking of some kind of mechanism. There is a
sigh-like flow of air and a warm, chant-like element. A raspy shimmer
emerges, with a metallic scything sweep high in the air. Around the
track’s midpoint, quiet radio-tones squeak and rustle in a nest of
bubbling echoes. It ends with a lighter, windy feeling, suggesting a
bit more space, or even the reaching of the surface. For me, this
track conveyed the oppressive feeling of being deep underground. It
felt both mechanical and vast, yet also hinted at a distant busyness
or industry. Maybe the protagonist finds out what it’s like above
ground by the end?
The next track is The
Slow March of Extinction, and it carries the windy ending from the
first, forward into new territory. This is a bleak, wind-blasted
track, with a growing drone and bell-chiming tone soon joined by
echoing footsteps on a stone floor. This feels like a ghostly track,
the string-like swells, and the strange vocal calls, pushing their
way through the ruined walls and windows of an abandoned
civilization. If the protagonist does find any kind of breathable,
liveable world on the surface, I think that this track provides a
kind of reverse history lesson, helping the wanderer see what their
future above ground might hold.
The final track,
Dissolving Into Solitary Landscapes, rounds things off with a rainy,
dripping echoing space. A low drone pulses and throbs, and there is a
distant, rasping quality to the air, a little like a prolonged snarl.
There is the feeling of static building, with boinging metallic
plucks and chimes. As the track continues, a soft synth tone begins,
with distant impacts pushing gently into awareness once more. After
the midpoint, there are moments of a “flapping plastic build-up”
and dispersal, joined by a stronger, wavering synth. This is another
beautiful track of ruin and desolation.
The soundscapes
contained on Dissolving into Solitary Landscapes
include a mixture of drones, field recordings and gentle synth tones,
all served up in a way that simultaneously seems to soothe and chill
at the same time. There are muted or muffled crumps and impacts,
sonorous chimes that throb in the air, and atmospheres at times, that
seem sentient and watchful. There is a feeling of ruin and of menace,
of sadness and of relief, and it’s a fantastic album to delve into
on a cold winter night.
The interactions
between our memories and what our senses actually experienced is
something that seems core to so much of our human existence.
Ucholak’s dark ambient album Traveller's Tales toys with
this concept by mingling technology, biology and the human yearning
for exploration.
Traveller's Tales’
description frames the album as being set in the distant future, a
time when humanity has been exploring what the universe holds, far
beyond our own home galaxy. One of the key ways that information was
gathered during this period was the use of neurotechnology to record
what the early explorers witnessed and experienced. Some of these
recordings became corrupted by the retrieval process, or by other
means, with the resulting glitches mingling what the astronauts’
senses revealed with the darker workings of their own minds. The
incomplete reports were dubbed Traveller's Tales, hence the very cool
concept behind this album.
Part I opens with a
sustained drone and a slightly fuzzy melody that roams from ear to
ear. Ominous slow swells rise beneath, impact-like sounds heard
through the mixture. After this opening soundscape, things become
quieter, descending into a kind of “sad jazzy” feeling space,
with whistling tones and scratchy microphone texture pops. A little
later, the sound of a distorted radio voice emerges, with beeps and
echoes making the space feel lonely. There are strange metallic
chiming notes, an ear pulsing beat amidst a muffled clattering
cacophony, and nymph-like calls in the air. Near its end, I thought
the elements of the track conspired to hint at a kind of mocking
laughter. Maybe the hapless astronaut featured in this recording
crash-landed onto a featureless moon and lost him or herself to their
own inner-critic as the voices on the radio faded to silence.
As desolate as Part I
felt, Part II felt like a trip to a lovely paradise planet. There is
a warm drone, the sound of waves, and strange bird-like tones that
chirrup amidst metallic chiming notes. An element of discord enters
by way of a distant drone that buzzes past, a speaker blaring
unintelligible but somehow soothing words as it floats over. The
words pulse and echo away. The soundscape changes into a deepening,
fuzzy, bass-filled place, maybe signifying the coming of night. What
sounds like a spaceship drive spinning up and taking off looms into
awareness, and after this, things turn a little more twisted. My own
impressions were decidedly insectoid, with electronic warbles and
sweeps meeting mandible-like clicks and scrapings. Egg shell crackles
and strange voices on the wind hint at an unpleasant experience for
the astronaut. For me, this track depicted what someone accidentally
being left behind on a hostile planet might experience.
If Part II was
paradisical, Part III felt like some kind of trippy descent into
Hell. It opens with a scale-sliding wah-wah type tone, with knocks
and impacts echoing away into a vast space. There are beeps and the
hint of a radio voice, and then things deepen into a quieter,
brooding, droning environment. This new location feels bestial and
chiming, with a kind of bouncing, scuffling quality. At this point,
what came to mind was a spaceship entering an evil kind of
hyperspace, much like the warp in Warhammer 40K. It isn’t all heavy
and dark however, there are gossamer tones and what at one point
seemed to be the space equivalent of sirens luring sailors to their
doom. Maybe the astronaut in this traveller's tale was asleep in a
cryogenic chamber while their ship travelled through something that
triggered nightmares. Or maybe they really were in a nightmare and
the sounds in this track are their mind trying to piece their reality
together again.
The final track, Part
IV, is a more beepy, beaty affair, with the space between memories
and reality seeming its thinnest in the whole album. After the
beat-laden, ear roaming radio voice opening, a xylophone-like melody
begins with the sound of a ticking clock behind it. When I heard
this, I wondered if an astronaut was remembering something from
childhood, maybe lulled by the mechanical rumbles of the spacecraft,
or whatever was being experienced. The melody suggested childhood to
me anyway, but it could equally have been from a sad fun faire. The
soundscape turns more crumpy and guttural after this, with whistling
cries and agitated impacts and electronic flares. It seems like a
scratchy, flapping space, and I can only guess what the astronaut is
experiencing to bring about the sounds of this recording.
Traveller's Tales
is a dark ambient album built around a concept that I really love. I
find the whole idea of corrupted neural implant recordings from far
future astronauts, decoded by scientists in the even further future,
a fun thing to ponder. The tracks of the album all suggest different
events befalling the hapless space travellers, and each track serves
up a diverse mixture of textures and impressions. If I had to choose
my favourite track, it would be Part II, as the way a paradise seems
to turn into a fearful place holds the biggest emotional sway for me.
If you enjoy your dark ambient with a futuristic sci-fi flavour, I
think you’d enjoy Traveller's Tales.
