Dark Ambient Review: Yōkai

Review By Casey Douglass

It’s always interesting to see how various cultures experience darkness; the forms that their ghosts and demons take. Yōkai are spirits or entities from Japanese folklore, and Visions of Ulnahar’s Yōkai is a dark ambient album that presents some of these beings, in soundscapes that only dark ambient can really do.

In general, the soundscapes on Yōkai make a great use of insidious sounds: cold and hollow textures, ghostly high tones and shimmers, and echoing, throbbing spaces. Something that a good number of the tracks also do is take advantage of harsher, or at the least, unexpected sounds. These keep the listener focussed but also probably rule Yōkai out as an album to drift off to sleep with, which is something I often like to do.

An example of the kind of unexpected sound that you might hear, can be found in one of my favourite tracks: Your Ghost Danced in the Shadows of Old Trees. The track begins with an undulating vibrating tone and the sound-waves of a cymbal or gong reverberating. Sparkling static and sweeping notes convey a feeling of sadness, and these give way to crackles, a roiling synth tone and a low drone. A number of the sounds on this track end abruptly, before you think they will. Once you pass the midpoint, alongside the piano melody that is playing, a sudden female gasp cuts through the soundscape. It happens a number of times and every time it did, it made me jump. It’s quite rare for anything I’m listening to make me jump, and it’s used very well in this ghostly track.

Summoning is the next track, and also another favourite. It opens with a strange shimmering clattering, one that’s clipped and bedded on rumbling bass. The echoes of said clattering have a kind of digital fuzz at their edges, like you’re listening to data corruption occurring. A low drone begins with muffled crackling in the ears. This is a deep and brooding track, one in which the sudden swells of sound fizz and agitate the soundscape. This track feels like the agitating sounds are stirring the atmosphere, helping whoever is summoning a spirit in their endeavours.

The final track I’m going to mention is Confrontation. It starts with a beat that twists down as it echoes. It feels a little plastic, a bit vibratory. A broken metallic sound joins it, a sensation of a ripping or rendering happening. Then come short snippets of muffled melody and an uneasy feeling of metal under strain. This is another abyssal track, the whistling tones, warm synth, and roaming drones setting up a feeling of protoplasm, beeping technology and sparkling lights in the aether. Fast string notes emerge in the second half, lending the whole thing an urgent feeling of time running out. A fun, spooky track.

Yōkai is a dark ambient album of ghostly manifestation, the battle for control, and quiet roaming sadness. Some of the sounds seem fully under the sway of the Yōkai being evoked, while others seem like the environment or surrounding atmosphere reacting to their presence. Whatever is going on, and however the sounds trigger images in your own mind, the underlying feeling of the supernatural comes through nicely.

Visit the Yōkai page on Bandcamp for more information. You can also check out the title track Yōkai below:

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Yōkai

Album Artist: Visions of Ulnahar

Label: Noctivagant

Released: 3 July 2021

Dark Ambient Review: Yokai

Review By Casey Douglass

Sometimes, the things that are the scariest, or the most awe inspiring, are things that you cannot see. Many horrors or creature features make good use of this, cloaking a giant creature in fog, only permitting you to hear the thundering of its movements or to feel the force of its roar. Yokai is a dark ambient album from The Rosenshoul aka Duncan Ritchie, and for me, takes the notion of vast horrors being hidden and puts it into audio form.

So what does the audio form of this concept sound like? Yokai is a blaring, rumbling album, with three soundscapes that pulse and groan with unbridled feelings of power. Early on, I got a metallic vibe from things, like edited and stretched gong or cymbal clashes reverberating around ominous horn tones. There is a hissing, breathless sound too, but one coming from something massive and certainly not human. At times, there seems to be a bestial roar-like element, like some great leviathan pounding hatred into the landscape with its fists. The image that soon came to mind was of the Talos statue coming to life in Jason and the Argonauts, but even Talos feels puny when compared to the size of the creature or creation in Yokai’s tracks.

The three tracks share a decent number of the sounds mentioned above, but each also managed to give me three distinct impressions as to what was happening. For me, the first track was filled with thoughts of a fog-cloaked colossal metallic creature or machine, traipsing across the landscape. Track two saw my perspective switch to some unfortunate souls sheltering deep in a mountain cave, hearing the thumps and rumbles of the creature battling their army miles away. The final track, for me, hinted at a lull where the creature was somehow mortally injured and was somehow giving birth to its successor before it died.

Yokai is a collection of tracks themed around supernatural beings from Japanese folklore, but as you can see, my mind did take me to other places. I can certainly notice the Japanese and martial elements to the music, but it just felt so perfectly leviathan to me. A really enjoyable album, one that cloaks you in an obscuring fog, hisses at you, buffets you, and presents you with ominous swells of bone-rattling sound.

Visit the Yokai page on Bandcamp for more information.

You might also like to check out Mombi Yuleman’s Storm-Maker Red Horse as that is another album that really struck me as embodying giant beings and creating a feeling of being small by comparison. 

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Yokai

Album Artist: The Rosenshoul (Duncan Ritchie)

Released: 25 Jun 2008

Japanese Art, Porno Puns, and Life Writing with Illness

Japanese Art, Porno Puns, and Life Writing with Illness

By Casey Douglass

Last night, I watched most of a documentary about Japanese art, about how nature is so pivotal to it, and how it inspired some of the greatest creations throughout Japanese history. The fact that I only watched most of the documentary isn’t a negative review by the way, I was just too tired to watch it all.

Thinking about it this morning led to a flight of fancy about what it might be like to actually visit the places that were shown, such as the Bonsai museum and Mount Fuji. I fancied that if it ever happened, I might even try my hand at travel writing, and wondered at what it would feel like to actually have something exciting to share, by way of words, pictures and video.

Of course, me being me, my flight of fancy soon became a morbid rumination on my health issues, and how a trip to Japan would likely be some kind of suicide. Oh, that’s reminded me of another place I’d have liked to visit, Aokigahara, the suicide forest near Mount Fuji. Not to partake, but just to experience the place. (VICE did a nice little 30 min documentary about Aokigahara, well worth a watch, if you are interested).

The result of my thoughts was in how frustrating it is to not be able to experience life in a way that would help me to have material to write about. I can’t even consume entertainment in any kind of normal way, which is a bit of a fucker for someone who likes to review stuff. I read books at a rate of ten pages or so a time, and then have to rest. I watch films in two sittings, often needing to lay down half way through. I can only listen to around 40 mins of music a day as any more just tires me. And as far as video-games, even one that might have around six hours of content would take me at least three or four days to pace myself through. It’s not ideal and it’s damned frustrating.

All I am left with is my own internal experience (sounds like a title for a posh porno “Internal Experience 2: The Physical”) or writing fiction. Dealing with those in an arse-about-face manner (sorry, still in naughty porn pun mode), fiction is dandy but is even harder to make progress with than the non-fiction stuff. Even if you create something pretty decent, you’ll still be lucky if A) more than ten people read it and B) you make more than a tenner if you pop it up on Kindle.

As far as the internal experience stuff, who really cares? Unless you are setting yourself up as someone with “the answers” and writing hackneyed listicles like “7 Ways to Beat Anxiety Fast” and “12 Must Have Mental Health Tools” (god I fucking hate listicles, but I find it very amusing that my spellchecker suggests testicles as an alternative. Even computers can detect bollocks it seems), people won’t read it. I also refuse to set myself up as some kind of expert on anything. Not because of the backlash against experts in this age of rising ignorance, but because I don’t have the answers, and I wouldn’t bullshit my way through an article about something that I couldn’t backup with my own experience. I know stuff, I write about that stuff, but I’m not prepared to “market it” in the guise of some holy grail of “this will solve your problems” and then adding “Why not take my course?” (Everyone and their aunty seems to think you have to offer some kind of course on your website now. Just fuck off. Really.)

Anyway, internal experience. I spend a lot of time alone, struggling through the day. Unless I create some kind of twisted fiction story out of that, with imaginary beings that live in the corners and are at war with each other. “Oh, we don’t go into corner four in the spare-room, the O’Cleefes murdered one of the Spitzers there, so they are forever at war with the third cupboard from the fridge in the kitchen!”. As The Cumshots (great band) say in one of their songs, “These four walls, that's my society”. If I start basing fiction in them, I couldn’t guarantee that I wouldn’t go loopy. Loopier anyway.

I don’t know what the whole point of this post was. Partly, just to write something and get the juices flowing (not in a porno way). Partly, to have something to focus on for awhile, and partly, (more parts than a gore movie so far), partly, in the hope that my mind might throw up some sort of answer. Sadly, I’m shit out of luck on that count. As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you are having a good day or night, whatever you are upto. Unless you are writing listicles.

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