Dark Ambient Review: City of Tethers
Review by Casey Douglass
City of Tethers is an ambient and glitch-based experimental album from guitarist and sound artist Corrado Maria De Santis. The album description says that it was inspired by part of Italo Calvino’s book Invisible Cities, which makes mention of a city hanging over an abyss, with a net the only thing stopping it from falling in. What I found really interesting is that the people who live in the city know that the net will break one day, but that this makes their life less uncertain than the lives of people who live in other, less precarious cities.
Upon reading this, I found myself quite enchanted with the concept. Is it really better to live with a looming threat that is pretty certain, than to live in some kind of miasma of intangible yet almost infinite fears or concerns? Is it possible to be at peace on the edge of ruin? Do you appreciate life more? Does everyone who lives there feel this way or are there plenty who envy the citizens in the next city, the ones who don’t have a vertigo inducing view from their bedroom windows?
To be fair, the album description also relates how the theme of City of Tethers is all about the tensions between the systems that we rely on in our daily lives, how they affect the environment etc. but I don’t mind admitting that I mainly stuck to the “Holy shit, a city over an abyss!” point of view. There’s depth here if you want it, pun partially intended. Just be thankful it wasn’t a double entendre! Anyway, onto the music itself…
The opening track, City of Tethers, begins with a low drone that has a hiss at the fringes. Wavering tones appear and hover, a low distorted heartbeat-like pulsing underpinning things. Gentle, flakey distortions bring falling pebbles and soil to mind, with echoing rattlings, a distant shimmer, and ahh-like vocal effects joining the soundscape. For me, the overall mood and feeling of this track was of the last rallying trumpet call of a civilization that is about to be lost.
The next track, Entangled Uncertainties, opens with echoing muted mechanical trundling sounds. Electronic tones sway into the soundscape and there is another hint of those ahh-like vocals. The tones seem to align at times and to pull each other along. They feel melancholy. Organ-like notes and crackles emerge as the track’s halfway point nears. There is also a slow, deep breath-like hiss that flows and ebbs at the edges. This track, particularly once the organ-like notes began, had a worshipful, grateful feeling, like the last ever service in a church that would be gone the next day.
The Ravine is up next, a track that gets going with a chiming, pulsing space, backed by a low, wavering drone. There are more falling pebble type sounds, and vibrating flares of deep tone. There is a pervasive juddery feeling, and more of the gentle vocal-like sounds. This track resonates and rings with feelings of vertigo and of being haunted. This is further reinforced later when some of the sounds seem to take on the aspect of the shrieking of a flock of carrion birds; but the sound is soft and not harsh.
Dusk’s Embrace is the penultimate track, and after a very quiet start, it soon spins up into some wind-like static, pulsing semi-rough tones and a low drone. There is distortion like clipped rain drops too, and a warm fuzziness to things. Higher tones appear, strong and taught with a tension that seems to embody the struggle between light and dark. The whole track for me, felt like a bated breath, but also of peace and an ending. I also felt that as the track continued, the higher tone appears to weaken as night seems to win out against the daylight.
Finally, there is Floatin’ on the Edge, the longest track on the album at just over thirteen minutes. The track begins with scuffing knocking echoes and woody vibrations. There is a growing drone that slowly throbs with potential energy, like something poised for action. Gentle tones describe a leisurely simple melody that seems sad and somehow final. The tones pulse and mirror each other with hints of discord and struggling, with higher pitched tones then appearing to make the space seem busier. As the track plays out, it gains a teetering tension, and it feels like it gathers a kind of “busy beehive” type air. In the final quarter, there are odd tinkling and metallic clinking sounds, with low bassy judders and buffeting sounds. Maybe the city is about to fall…
City of Tethers is an album that adeptly embodies its theme of a precarious city dangling over untold depths. As I said in my opening paragraphs, I find the concept very beguiling and I’m happy to say that the music fits those mental associations wonderfully. The music is sad and uplifting, and also fraught with the dichotomies between light and dark, existence and destruction, and peace and fear. If you enjoy drone-based distortions and juddering textured soundscapes entwined with a concept that just begs for more than idle pondering, you should check out City of Tethers on Bandcamp when you get the time.
I was given a review copy of this album
Album Title: City of Tethers
Album Artist: Corrado Maria De Santis
Label: Owl Totem Recordings, Distributed by Fonodroom
Released: 26 November, 2024