Dark Ambient Review: HORS
Review By Casey Douglass
How we see the world has a profound impact on our view of life, so when photography and dark ambient music come together to create a new or a different way of seeing, it’s something to take a closer look at. An album that does just this is HORS, an experimental ambient project inspired by the photos of photographer David Siodos.
Browsing David Siodos’ website, and perusing the photos used for the HORS album artwork, it’s easy to see why the interplay between the photographer and the musician is a tasty one. David’s photos have a kind of graininess, for lack of a better word, a darkness and dreaminess that falls across certain of the images like snow, the way that some of the elements become silhouettes amidst a Silent Hill style fog, lending the photos a dreamy, yet realistic quality.
The music of HORS strikes up a pleasing parallel with the moods evoked by the photographer. The tracks have a droning, industrial texture, creating some lovely fuzzy walls that the small, detail sounds struggle to pierce. There is a warmth to be found in the soundscapes though, alongside some darker impressions of things shifting or encroaching on the reality presented.
Wasteland is my favourite track, as I felt it to be the audio-equivalent of a tiny flower managing to grow in the middle of an abandoned factory’s floor. A throbbing bassy drone emerges with muffled snatches of fuzz. An undulating tone screeches forlornly and is soon joined by warm piano notes. Things burst through into a soft summery haze of lighter melody and texture, with flute-like notes playing at the high end of the soundscape. A pleasing harshness persists however. This track also feels like sunlight piercing the gloom, and the hints of what seem to be bird tweets in the second half lend weight to this feeling.
Industrial Things is another track that gave me some fun mental images, but certainly veers towards the darker end of the spectrum. The track opens with a pulsing, throbbing mixture of static and bass, with a strange almost vocal-like mewling, stretched out into a tasty slab of reverb. Twisting high pitched tones accompany it, with a low pulsing below. A rhythmic collection of vibrating tones kicks off, giving the impression of a mechanical heartbeat. Expansive swells of guitar-like tones wail along with proceedings too, lending a sharpness to things at times, which I particularly liked. This track, for me, was part train journey through a neglected industrial area, part demonic printing press stamping out receipts for the souls yet to be purchased. Dark and rhythmic.
The first track, Incoming, is also a track that I wanted to mention. This one also features a guitar-like fuzz and hum, droning into existence alongside wailing high tones and scratchy notes. These notes seem to take on an alarm-like feel, and the static-filled space led me to feeling like a tiny particle in the midst of a fuzzy storm. This track felt part electron-mating call, part digital-ghosts infesting the TV signal. It felt warm and peaceful, although it was probably the kind of warm and peaceful that only a dark ambient or experimental music fan would appreciate.
HORS is a dark ambient album that is both noisy and muted in different, but interesting ways. The interplay between the elements of each track strike up some pleasing friction and textures, and on the whole, it felt very “switching the foreground and the background around”, which I think gels well with the photography that it’s based on. Definitely an album to check out if you like your dark ambient industrial, drone-heavy, and interplaying with another art form.
Visit the HORS page on Bandcamp for more information. You can also see some of the photography that it is inspired by on the David Siodos website.
I was given a review copy of this album.
Album Title: HORS
Album Artist: HORS
Released: Nov 25, 2022