Dark Ambient Review: The Curse of Spring-Heeled Jack

Review By Casey Douglass

It’s funny how the ghouls and spectres from the non-digital past seem to be all that much more mysterious and sinister for it. The fog of hand-me-down memories and the way that we always think that we know better than our more “simple” or less “enlightened” ancestors creates a strange kind of grittiness to the topic, an almost feral air of interest. For The Curse of Spring-Heeled Jack, criptid corraller and myth master Mombi Yuleman has turned his attention to the bouncy and sinister Victorian folklore of Spring-Heeled Jack.

Spring-Heeled Jack was the name that society bestowed on the perpetrator of a number of mysterious attacks in Victorian Britain, his most popularised characteristic being his ability to jump to great heights. He was also apparently of a sinister aspect, and at the time, set imaginations and hearts racing. Mombi’s musical style of bouncy electronic notes and rhythms lends itself so well to this subject matter, and from the very first track, this smoke-laden, industrial slab of British history jiggles and jounces into the listener’s lugs.

The opening track, Hammersmith 1837, does a great job of setting the scene and feel of the album. A bubbling, clock-ticking, bell-like opening produces bouncy notes and melodies, backed by choral swells, organ tones and guitar chugging. For me, this track had “chase music” written all over it, and I had a pleasing mental impression of Victorian London at midnight, pale moonlight illuminating chimney smoke, and the fleeting shadow that happens to be bounding from rooftop to rooftop. The latter half of the track features a kind of whirling, helicopter “whup-ping” sound which greatly aids in this mental image. A fun but also sinister track.

Another track that really stood out for me is Jack be Nimble, Jack be Quick. Sitting at just under three minutes long, it opens with a mechanical, hissing, factory-like environment. Twisting plucked notes and a bulbous deep tone sit in the soundscape alongside a knocking beat and sounds of activity. A ghostly chorus emerges with a squelchy melody, and then, manic laugher backed by what sounds like a hammer hitting an anvil. This is another track that suggested the notion of being chased to me. Maybe Spring-Heeled Jack is trying to evade capture by bounding through an active foundry?

The Devil’s Footprints follows, and begins with a warped clockwork knocking rhythm. It’s a fuzzy track, but one that features a gnat-like melody that really buzzes into your mind. This track had a melancholy or at the least, a more peaceful feel. Maybe this track is depicting the carnage left in Jack’s wake, the common city-dwelling folk waking up and finding bloodstains outside of their homes. A really enjoyable track and a different kind of mood, although that mood does shift slightly as the track approaches its conclusion.

I briefly wanted to mention two more tracks that grabbed me. I enjoyed Exploits at the Astronomical Clock for its “heist movie” feel, particularly when the string-like notes emerge in the latter half. Terrorizing the SS also really comes to mind as a great track that would sit well behind a newspaper headline montage in a movie, the escalating headlines backed by its blend of stabby notes and darting strings. They both have the urgent feeling of “things happening”, which is something that I enjoyed.

The Curse of Spring-Heeled Jack struck me in a very “filmic” way, the visual impressions and movie angles that I seem to have pondered only something that I noticed when writing this review. This is to Mombi’s credit of course, and shows why he chose “soundtrack” as one of the tags for this album on Bandcamp. The album is full of fast, bouncy, and often jaunty melodies, but all backed with that twisting, creeping weirdness that Mombi is so good at injecting. As in his previous album Witch-Works, and others, Mombi has brought the Halloween-type spirit to a dark piece of British folklore. If you enjoy forteana with a light-hearted yet sinister aspect, you’d do well to check out The Curse of Spring-Heeled Jack.

P.S You might also like to check out Mark Hodder’s Burton and Swinburne series of books, the first of which is called The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, an excellent steampunk alternate history saga that I read some years ago.

Visit the The Curse of Spring-Heeled Jack page on Bandcamp for more information.

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: The Curse of Spring-Heeled Jack

Album Artist: Mombi Yuleman

Released: Feb 3, 2023

Dark Ambient Review: Abductee

Review By Casey Douglass

When I briefly flirted with New Age instrumental music, before I discovered dark ambient, one of my favourite CDs was about UFOs and aliens. It even had a shiny-eyed grey alien on the cover. Looking back, it was quite a dark album, but if you compared it to Mombi Yuleman’s dark ambient Abductee... well, its a little like comparing a pink unicorn to a denizen from one of the levels of Hell. That’s a good thing, in Mombi’s favour, just to be clear. Unless you have a thing for pink unicorns of course.

Abductee takes its inspiration from the many stories of human and alien interaction that can be found in the Fortean media, and sometimes, in the mainstream. I dare say that there are some notions from horror and sci-fi films and novels in there too, as the subject often provides fertile ground for creepy tales to be told. Abductee contains ten tracks that seem to take the listener on a journey with a hapless abductee, beginning in a forest and taking in hurried chases, furtive exploration, and being returned home at the end of things.

Mombi does a great job of weaving in sounds that seem to embody the subject matter wonderfully. The foremost comes from a number of tracks that feature a kind of ‘rustling plastic’ aesthetic. I don’t know about you, but for me, with the theme of the album in mind, this has the feeling of something medical, something experimental going on. Another prominent stable of sounds are the hissing, beeping radio-like swirls of static and electronic tones. Technology certainly plays its role. And of course, there are those fleshy, screeching, biological sounds that hint at strange creatures and other humans nearby. These three elements meld together so well to create a feeling of being onboard a dank alien craft, a new horror lurking around almost every corner.

Cocoons is a track that depicts the creepy exploration aspect mentioned above. It begins with a swirling, pulsing sci-fi tone and a hint of trickling water. There is a faint, distant high tone and a drone that begins with a sparkle for accompaniment. String-like notes sway and flow, a light melody begins, and a sense of chittering things flying around came through to me. Towards the end of the track, groans can be heard as the atmosphere begins to judder. It probably comes as no surprise that this track conjured visions of rooms full of strange cocoons to my mind, rooms complete with victims begin absorbed into their fleshy walls.

Medical Examination (feat. Noctilucant) is another fine track, one that, for obvious reasons, felt the most medical of them all. The opening sound is the thump of a beating heart. There are bubbling sounds, mechanical equipment whooshing, and an echoing beat that seems to take on the mantle of a clock ticking. There are swells of tone and hiss. There is an impression of juddering, and around the midpoint, a hollowness. Certain of the tones seem to embody a kind of sharpness, their clipped, metallic nature sitting nicely in a soundscape of whirring, pulsing, chiming activity. Flowing beneath all of this are the deep roaming droning tones that bathe everything in an atmosphere of darkness. I really enjoyed this track.

Finally, Grays is another track that I wanted to single out, as it has a majesty all of its own. It opens with a deep drone and a sparkling chime. There are plopping sounds, strange cries and an airy, sinister feeling. A chant-like droning begins, a whistling quality at its edges. It feels very meditative, but also otherworldly, as someone might feel when witnessing something never before seen. Bass impacts reverberate and agitate the soundscape into more strange cries. A rattle-snake hissing and echoing knockings emerge, with radio swirls and a low gritty clicking. As the track reaches its last third, a kinetic, pulsing rhythm begins, tinny squeaks nestling into the wall of drone. For me, this track was about someone finally seeing the answer to a question that they had half feared to know.

Abductee is a dark ambient album that simmers with interplanetary threat, but rather than the “space will crush you” variety, seeds its soundscapes with beings that have a more personal, a more fleshy interest in the targets of their attention. The fact that they seemingly don’t want to kill but simply to experiment or alter, adds an extra layer of mystery and uncertainty to what might actually be happening. This feeling, taken with the sounds Mombi has woven into his ten dark tracks, makes Abductee an album well worth checking out.

Visit the Abductee page on Bandcamp for more information.

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Abductee

Album Artist: Mombi Yuleman

Released: 24 September 2021

 Dark Ambient Interview: Mombi Yuleman

I first became aware of dark ambient artist Mombi Yuleman when our paths crossed on Twitter and he sent me a code for his Storm-Maker Red Horse album. Since that time, I’ve come to appreciate Mombi’s particular brand of dark ambient music, something that I’d describe as part retro horror soundtrack and part “spirit of Halloween in a bottle”. Mombi kindly agreed to an interview, the result of which you can read below. We take in such topics as John Carpenter’s soundtracks, our joint experience of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, religion, music as a means of communication, and of course, dark ambient.

* * *

Casey: You are known for your monster-fuelled, mysterious dark ambient albums, but your music didn’t begin with the genre. How did you discover ambient, and the dark ambient genre in particular, what do you enjoy about creating this style of music, and what role does your love of horror soundtracks play in the way that you create?

Mombi: I got into music production over ten years ago with an industrial project called "Junkyard Apocalypse". I was really inspired by artists like Front Line Assembly and Dismantled but more than anything I was inspired by film scores and soundtracks. I grew up listening to composers like Jerry Goldsmith, Ennio Morricone, and most of all John Carpenter. The soundtrack stuff is what I mostly had playing in my ears from as far back I remember. So the cinematic element was very important to me when creating my own music.

After I created an album and some demos, I pretty much dropped "Junkyard Apocalypse" and music as a whole for many years for various reasons. During this period of time I was heavy into creating industrial sculptures and housewares out of found objects. I called this project "Junkyard Avenue". I had a YouTube channel at the time showing how I created these weird lamps and art decor out of metal pipes, pulleys, and giant gears. Much of it had a steampunk theme. I'd listen to a lot of those soundtracks I grew up with while building artwork, but I remember specifically trying to find soundscapes that sounded like a factory in the distance, with steam and metal clangs to further enhance the atmosphere when I was creating these things at home. I found out about an industrial noise act called Stratvm Terror that I fell in love with, and that's when I discovered some mixes by Cryo Chamber on YouTube as well. This would have been circa 2012 or so.

After some years, the "Junkyard Avenue" project fell through because I was moving so much, and carrying hundreds of pounds of found objects from state to state is exhausting. It was sad because I didn't have a passion project anymore. So, after some time I started going to music festivals. Particularly psytrance parties. These events inspired me to get into music again. While, I wasn't attempting to make psytrance music, I thought I would get into weird cinematic influenced EDM again. I branded myself as Mombi Yuleman and churned out a six track EDM EP. It was a good way of getting familiar with a DAW again. I had a lot of trouble getting my ideas together for a second release.

I was listening to all kinds of genres within the underground dance scene. Stuff like dark techno, psytrance, psychill. Thing is, rather than take a genre and really learn it and craft pieces that fell within those genres, I would take ideas from those genres and form my own EDM sound. And in all honesty, many of those tracks were never sounding quite right to me. Too many ideas and not enough focus. One of the things that was recurring within all of these sounds though, was a cinematic mood driven element. My girlfriend would put on a lot of ambient music at night time to sleep to. Some of these tracks were often quite bleak and mood driven. Even cinematic. That's when a light bulb went off and I realized that's the kind of thing I should have been taking a stab at all along! Dark mood driven cinematic music with no real necessity to follow a predictable pattern, rhythm or theme. Soundtracks to films that don't exist. Of course! I totally wanted Mombi Yuleman to represent my own unique take on this whole cinematic dark ambient thing, and dropped dance music altogether under the Mombi name.

Casey: In an interview with horror writer David Allen Voyles, you discussed your Witch-Works album, saying that ever since you got your first synthesizer, you always wanted to make an album like Witch-Works, and then adding that you could probably die happy having now made it. That’s quite a statement! When you listen back to Witch-Works, which elements are you the most fulfilled by, the components that you listen to and know that you nailed it. Also, which pieces of equipment do you most enjoy playing with when it comes to your music creation?

Mombi: Yes, as mentioned, I love listening to film scores, and to the film scores of John Carpenter, specifically the ones where he collaborated with Alan Howarth, had a sound that I was fond of more than any other synth based soundtrack artist at the time. I wanted to compose a soundtrack with a Halloween theme that was in alignment with that same sound but give it my own spin and incorporate some subtle orchestral and industrial elements here and there. I tip my hat to some other horror composers in that one but it's mostly John Carpenter influenced. Jars of Spiders, Dance of the Scarecrows and Through the Pumpkin Swamp are certainly tracks I feel particularly fond of. Leaves is also a sorrowful track that I feel really embraces some of my own inner turmoil.

I really only work with VST's rather than hardware synths, even though I had a Roland JP-8000 for years but it was unfortunately damaged during one of my many moves. I use Omnisphere in almost all of my work. There's just so much I love about the sounds within that magnificent synth. I tend to use a lot of programs by Native Instruments as well, the Symphony Series comes to my aid where appropriate. I lack the knowledge on how to orchestrate full blown symphonies, but using those instruments as elements with a soundtrack or a dark ambient album is so much fun.

Casey: In one of your YouTube videos, you said that you make music because you feel that your life depends on it, with the spectre of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) looming over you. What are some of the ways that your OCD has manifested in the past, and is your creative practise a refuge from the OCD, or does it sometimes encroach on your music composing as well? I ask as a fellow OCD sufferer, and for me, OCD always seems to attach to the things that I care about.

Mombi: OCD made itself manifest in my life at a very young age. It started out by washing my hands over and over. Eventually as years passed, guilt over intrusive thoughts had me performing seemingly bizarre rituals over and over, like running up and down stairs, or I'd stare at walls for hours while I think a certain pattern of thoughts in a particular arrangement, until it felt right to let them go. I spent the majority of my teen years going through this. It wasn't until my early twenties, when I left the town I grew up in that the extreme side of OCD started to lose it's grasp. When I discovered that I no longer felt a need to have religion in my life, things got a lot better as well.

Though I still suffer forms of OCD, it's not nearly as bad as it used to be and I mostly deal with anxiety and the occasional existential crisis these days. There are times where OCD rears it's ugly head during the production process, to some degree it's beneficial. I'm never completely satisfied with my work. I often re-render files over and over to get them to where I feel they are just right, when perhaps the sounds were perfectly fine before. But this is also where I feel OCD benefits me to some degree, as long as I'm not tearing my hair out over it. A lot of work goes into an album and my OCD mostly seems to help me strive to be better for the most part. If it gets out of hand and I'm stressing too much, I recognize this and I take a break from making music altogether. I try to come back to it with fresh ears and usually it's not nearly as bad as I thought it was. I am often quite pleased with where I ended up after I've taken breaks.

Casey: I’m a big fan of taking breaks from creative work too. I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve hated something I’ve written, but after returning to it with a clearer head, I often wonder why I was so critical of it. You mentioned religion, which I know can be a miserable subject to OCD sufferers that happen to suffer with scrupulosity issues. Which religion did you engage with or belong to, and how do you think this interacted with your OCD tendencies? I know that when I was struggling with my OCD at one of my worst points, my interest/mild belief in the occult wasn't particularly helpful. I still have a mild belief/interest, but I'm now more interested in perspectives that simplify or ease my life, rather than make it more complicated!

Mombi: I grew up in a very traditional southern baptist Christian bubble. The fear of Hell was instilled in me at a very young age. The idea of eternity in Hell really messed with me and I'm so happy I became a free thinker in my mid twenties. I understand how if you're constantly validated in a fear-based belief system by your family and friends it's nearly impossible to leave that. A belief system that makes you feel guilty for questioning it can be extremely hard to turn your back on.

When I left religion behind a lot of my OCD left with it. I was no longer afraid of constantly offending a deity I no longer had faith in and I'm so much happier for it. I love philosophy and obviously have an affinity for the occult. Though, because of the monumental task of overcoming the Christian belief system, I've learned to question everything and raise an eyebrow to anything that relies on me having to have faith. Existence, reality, consciousness and the cosmos are a true wonder to behold. Religion, to me, dumbs it down. Reality is much stranger and much more marvellous than fiction!

Casey: In the same YouTube video in which you mentioned your life depending on your music creation, you also mentioned that you are an introvert and that music is your way of communicating with people. What do you hope to communicate, by way of your music, and does the music sometimes reflect something back to you that you didn’t know about yourself previously?

Mombi: In group settings, I don't know how to really communicate. People can be going back and forth and I just don't know how to chime in. I'm the quiet one in a group and I prefer to listen whilst forming and keeping opinions to myself. Creating music gives me a way to boldly speak in a way an extrovert might. I hope the feelings evoked in the music can bring about thoughts that are both fantastic and relatable to those who listen. As in the case of my album, Storm-Maker Red Horse, I had the idea of an album where the subject matter was about a perpetual storm where a tornado just continued to grow and ravished the land until who knows when, as the listener becomes a victim themselves by the end of it. Indeed though, this particular album was much more about my own inner turmoil, depression and uncertainty that I was going through at the time. I do feel like there are folks who can listen to that one and relate to the chaos within.

Certainly there are themes and melodies that are born that I didn't know I've had in me but are very reflective of me upon listening. There's one in particular, a favourite progressive piece of mine written for an abandoned album concept and now I just can't figure out what to release it on. It starts out bombastic, goes into drone, then turns into a piano piece. Truly very progressive cinematic stuff and one that is very "me" that I had no idea was in me. It's been waiting to be released for years but I won't release it until it neatly fits on an EP or album or something. But for the most part, I'd say that I feel more relief that I'm actually able to finally get some of these sounds and melodies out of my head and into the world.

* * *

Thanks again to Mombi for providing such fascinating and in-depth answers to my questions. If you’d like to check out Mombi’s music, you can find him on Bandcamp and YouTube, among other places. You might also like to join his Facebook Group: Unearthing Your Internal Monsters, a group created to bring anyone who struggles with life, and who uses their creative endeavours to cope with it, together.

Dark Ambient Review: S.S. Moreau

Review by Casey Douglass

I’ve never read the book, or seen the films inspired by H.G Wells’ The Island of Dr Moreau, but I guess that the fact I know the general gist of it speaks to its pervasiveness in parts of our culture. While I remember watching a Simpsons’ Halloween special that tipped its hat to the tale, I’m not aware of having heard any music that was inspired by its species-meddling. That is, until now, as S.S Moreau is a dark ambient album from Scott Lawlor and Mombi Yuleman, one that takes the sinister idea of Dr Moreau and runs with it... all the way into space!

I quite like coming across stories or ideas that uproot something from its familiar setting, and that plants it somewhere quite different. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but others, it can take something that you previously felt quite indifferent to, and give it enough of a twist to make you realise that you really enjoy it in this form. The concept of S.S Moreau is that of a stranded spaceship crew who are rescued by the sinister doctor when his space station, the S.S Moreau, detects their distress beacon. Once “rescued”, and after a period of uneasy discovery, the crew eventually find themselves fleeing from his strange alien-hybrid creatures as they threaten to overrun the station.

I thought that the first track, The Biological Station, set this up beautifully. It opens with an eerie whistling drone, a little like what you might hear in the first Alien film’s score. A light beeping and a whirring tone looms, and what began as restful, grows into a more ominous soundscape. It starts to feel a bit swarm-like, and as if something big is coming. It is the audio equivalent of being on the verge of starvation and coming across a maggot ridden cow carcass. Salvation and doom all in one. A little later, the sounds and tones gave me the feeling of the stranded ship being swallowed up by the larger S.S Moreau, the creaking metal and cavernous feelings giving the impression that the larger ship actually licked its lips. Then you hear the organic, guttural sounds of strange creatures.

The tracks that follow feature a nice range of creature sounds. Some sound bird-like or monkey-like, others more alien. He Knows Something Of Science feels damn right tropical, with clicking trickling water, insect-like rattling and the hoots and chirps of who knows what. Monsters Manufactured is a different beast, one that feels more lab-like, more meddling. It opens with a deep male chant, a female one joins, and a third that warps up and seems alien... something other. An ominous beat and a tinny beeping rhythm create an enjoyable feeling of “wrongness”. It lightens a little later, with a female vocal and light, breezy tones, but the background sounds still hint at dark things. I thought that I heard faltering footsteps on metal floors at one point, and at another, a kind of trundling rising discord, like a mass breakout of warrior insects.

How The Beast Folk Tasted Blood is a clinking, smooth space, the slow beat soon joined by faster tempos. It felt a little tribal, a little “cannibal”, a little “exotic”. I liked the last third or so the most though, when things seem to darken, a sound like sea waves breaking on a beach of bones and a vibrating tone hinting at a line crossed that can’t be undone. The final track, No Desire To Return To Mankind, seems to give the protagonist a dark dose of grim determination. Its plastic-carrier-bag-rustling and throbbing bass tones giving it a “film end-credit” type feeling, one where the ending was far from happy and the scars and trauma will last in the survivor/s for the rest of their life. I particularly enjoyed the radio-chatter and the strange squawks and sounds that seep into things.

S.S Moreau is a dark ambient space treat for people who like their darkness with a sci-fi twist. Some of the sounds it contains seem close to their earthly counterparts, others seem warped and manipulated, which is a pleasing parallel between how tones are created for dark ambient albums, and the subject matter of hybrid-creation. If I was drifting in space and the S.S. Moreau offered rescue, I’d be game for that, even knowing how things would turn out. It sure beats starving to death or turning into an icicle as depressurization occurs.

Visit the S.S.Moreau page on Bandcamp for more information. You can also check out the track Monsters Manufactured below:

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: S.S. Moreau

Album Artist: Scott Lawlor & Mombi Yuleman

Released: 8 Jan 2021

Dark Ambient Review: Witch-Works

Review by Casey Douglass

I recently reviewed Mombi Yuleman’s Storm-Maker Red Horse, a turbulent dark ambient album full of the glory of nature and the unseen gods that just might be driving things. During Halloween, Mombi gave out some free Bandcamp codes for an earlier album he created: Witch-Works. It’s a dark ambient, retrowave album, and I was lucky enough to nab one of the codes. After listening to it, I decided to write this review.

Firstly, Witch-Works was a great album for Mombi to gift around at Halloween. From the pumpkin-orange colour in the artwork, to the theme of the album, it is certainly a very “Halloweeny” creation. It is based on a narrative about Black Cat Toys, a company apparently run by modern day warlock Harold O’Bannon. When the locals who live nearby find out, things don’t go very well for Harold. His cult followers set in motion a plan to resurrect him, and to also curse the town at the same time. Detective Kobritz and his son have to investigate why residents begin dying in strange circumstances, and the track titles hint at the kinds of scene that they are treated to. Jars of Spiders anyone?

Actually, Jars of Spiders is one of my favourite tracks, so I might as well start there. The track opens with busy strings, fuzz and a falling tone. There was something about how these mixed, that led to me envisioning a carnival tent with a stand of jars, neon light illuminating the darkness just enough to show the long-legged things inside them. The track feels like an 80s horror, but it feels warm and quirky rather than scary, unless you can’t stand spiders of course. Some way into the track, there is the sound of shattering glass and skittering across the floor. For me, this created the image of all of the spiders (and there are hundreds...) racing for freedom. Then you see what is left in the jars, shapes that look strangely anatomical and human. I thought this was a really fun track.

Another track that jumped out at me was Lil Breath Sucker. This track makes great use of the sounds of a cat, from the meows when it wants something, to a deep and soothing purr at the very end. I’m guessing the inspiration for this track comes from the fears of cats climbing into bed and stealing your breath. The sounds in this track seem to point that way, and it’s a nice kind of mental friction to listen to something you like (I love cats) and how that thing might kill you.

Two other tracks that I will give brief mention to are Extracting the Razor Blades and Silhouette of the Factory. The first features life support beeps and muffled underwater sounds, but also something I’d describe as a great “80s cop film slow car chase beat”, the kind of “Don’t let him see us” undercover stuff. Maybe the person being operated on last watched a TV detective show, who knows. As for Silhouette of the Factory, I enjoyed this track because it made great use of metallic sounds, echoing beats and hissing steam, and other sounds that really brought to mind what it might be like to be near a stark factory at night, viewing it against the moonlight and seeing the shapes clattering and grinding. It half brought the video-games Limbo and Inside to mind.

Witch-Works is a fun, beaty, dark retrowave experience. There is a plucky playfulness to many of the tracks, the spirit of the carnival, of the freak-show, and of course, of Halloween. There is darkness for sure, but it is wrapped in attractive neon glowing paper. I enjoyed listening to its mix of soundscapes and 80s style beats, and I hope that if there are any toy factory running Warlocks out in the world, that they appreciate they have a fine soundtrack for the movie that might one day be based on their deeds.

Visit the Witch-Works page on Bandcamp for more information, and check out Jars of Spiders below. Mombi also recently created a Facebook group for people who enjoy using creativity to deal with their internal fears or monsters. You can find that here.

I nabbed a gift code for this album.

Album Title: Witch-Works

Album Artist: Mombi Yuleman

Released: October 04, 2019

Dark Ambient Review: Storm-Maker Red Horse

Review by Casey Douglass

The forces of nature are a rich vein of inspiration for many an artist. Even when we think we understand the intricacies of the gargantuan powers involved, there are always exceptions that sidle up to us and deliver a swift kick to the groin. Mombi Yuleman’s Storm-Maker Red Horse is a dark ambient album focussing on a terrific supercell storm and tornado. In theme, the album straddles the modern world and the superstitions of tribal deities. It makes for quite a mixture!

Each of Storm-Maker Red Horse’s five tracks gives a nice build up of the storm brewing, the field-recorded wind, rain and thunder creating expansive soundscapes that the drones, beats and vocals sit well inside. There are moments of respite too, most noticeably at the beginning and end of each track, where things settle for just awhile as the elements muster their energy for another crack at destruction. In the next couple of paragraphs I'll give a very rough skim over each track, mainly so I can talk about what stood out for me, and the elements that I really enjoyed.

Track one opens with an ominous rumbling and the electronic tones of a warning system. Then comes thunder and the insect hiss of a twilight scene framed by a darkening sky. When the storm reaches a certain level, a humming-like sighing booms, but at distance. Maybe this is the creature creating the storm. This is a perfect illustration of the modern giving way to the esoteric; the storm warning alarms being superseded by the sound of a god throwing its weight around. Howling wind and airy vocals lend the scene a delicate brutality, for all the rumbling thunder and Godzilla-like bassy footfalls. The second track begins with wind, rain and birdsong. The storm is still brewing, but it seems to be in the distance. It doesn’t take long for the scene to build into a cacophony of bird-like screams and guttural speech. Around the midpoint, an infectious fast-paced beat and chant begins, a soundtrack to the leaves and debris swirling in the maelstrom.

The third track opens with the sound of rain against glass panes and the rumbling of the storm overhead. It later takes on a deep-breathing aesthetic, with the gritty wind, and a different kind of beat, lending a nice kinetic feeling to the soundscape. Track four opens with what sounds like the squeaking of a gate or a windmill. Metallic distress and increasing winds are punctuated by a stab of lightning. An epic beat begins, accompanied by a punchy vocal “huh-like” sound. Think of the kind of music you’d hear if you were watching Jason and the Argonauts sailing into a tempest. The second half of the track turns into a howling, scream-infused drone, like the steam building in a massive kettle. The last track returns to the modern again, a siren-like tone almost doing battle against the heaving, sighing storm. Sounds of modern life encroach as the track goes on, hints of voices, rattling machinery, and a church-bell like resonance. Near the end, a very definite warning siren sounds, with emergency vehicle tones, exploding glass and destruction ringing around the listener's ears.

Storm-Maker Red Horse is an awe-inspiring album. It captures the majesty of the elements and the destructive power of a massive storm, and weaves in a lovely dose of supernatural forces to give things an even more tasty twist. A regular storm is nice to listen to, a supercell tornado is scary, but one fuelled by some ethereal being... even better in my book! If you enjoy dark ambient with a healthy amount of field-recordings, drone and a mythic mystique, you should really check out Storm-Maker Red Horse.

Visit the Storm-Maker Red Horse page on Bandcamp for more information. You might also notice that I helped out with an edit of the synopsis. I did this freely to practice my writing. Doing said writing didn’t affect my review; I already very much liked this album.

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Storm-Maker Red Horse

Album Artist: Mombi Yuleman

Released: 18 September, 2020