Dark Ambient Review: Syfynetiks EP

Review By Casey Douglass

Artificial intelligence is a ripe topic for speculation, the questions of if, when, how and what will happen when it arrives, happily consuming the minds of both scientists and creatives alike. Nyctalllz’s Syfynetiks is a dark ambient space album that provides the soundtrack for what might happen if our own eventual AI made contact with the AI of an alien civilization, without our knowing it. It’s an interesting question. I mean, how would your phone or computer describe you and your characteristics to an alien race? Would you even get mentioned at all? Food for thought.

Syfynetiks contains three tracks, each of which feature a host of sci-fi electronic tones, beeps and drones. It feels like catching hints of voice through radio static while equipment throbs and pulses around you. It feels crisp and indifferent to the eavesdropper, but also rumbling, like the gates of hell might be opening up and there's nothing you can do about it.

The first track is Spacetime’s Crack and it embodies the feeling that I mentioned above. The rumbling opening is buffeted by soaring electronic beeps and sparkles. A rasping distortion rises and falls, like a demon gargling radio-waves, soon to be joined by a strange voice that seems to speak in a stilted, simulated way. This track feels jagged and droning, and is infested with radio swirls and squeals. There are hints of a feminine “ahh-vocal” around the midpoint, making me wonder if I was listening to the two AI’s beginning some kind of virtual fling. I hope that no one is being catfished...

Next up is Spirals of Time. This short track opens with a low buzz, one that sits in a space that feels windy and hollow, but in a simulated, digital kind of way. There is the sound of something spinning up and down, and a low drone. The soundscape feels like it’s boiling and gritty, and that it’s populated by a roaming, warping, electronic harmony. As the track continues, it feels more and more like it has a kind of inhaling and exhaling quality, and feels like it’s fizzing in the air. A strange, rumbling space.

The final track is Parallel Observers. This is a track of chiming tones and rustling static, one with a distorted, digitized impression of nature. It feels almost like being outside, but not. There’s a persistent jackdaw-like chittering in the distance and a low tone that bends and twists upwards. After a short time, a warbly, robot-like voice or tone begins, “dripping” echoes pinging off into some murky distance. This is another track that also feels like it fizzes and pulses. The chimes and echoes create a relaxing yet ominous space, and created a kind of “meditating on the Event Horizon” effect, for me at least.

Syfynetiks is a dark ambient album for lovers of space horror, bleak sci-fi themes, and the alien, magical feel of advanced technology. The three tracks on the EP all give the listener some fascinating spaces to explore, or to witness, and while you might feel quite alone in doing so, the idea that there are two AI’s conversing around you kind of means that alone is the one thing that you are not. Whether you matter, or are even noticed though... that is another question.

Visit the Syfynetiks page on Bandcamp for more information.

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Syfynetiks

Album Artist: Nyctalllz (Morego Dimmer)

Label: Zāl Records

Released: 6 August 2021

Dark Ambient Review: X-Theory (Best of 2005-2020)

Review by Casey Douglass

Xerxes The Dark is a dark ambient project from Iranian artist Morego Dimmer. It was founded in 2005 and is imbued with the concepts of strange spaces, warping time frames, and darkness. X-Theory (Best of 2005-2020) is a collection of some of the output from Xerxes The Dark in that time frame, a compilation that stretches to four hours in duration. That’s a lovely, heady dose of darkness if you ask me.

In the last couple of years, I’ve reviewed a couple of Xerxes The Dark’s more recent releases: Tower of Silence and Final Crisis. In general, in my dark ambient reviews, I usually highlight at least three tracks that stood out for me as ones that I particularly enjoyed. X-Theory contains five tracks from these two albums. Before I began to write this review, while listening to X-Theory, I noted down the tracks that immediately appealed to me, and then realised upon checking that they were from these two albums. Above, I’ve linked to the reviews in which I covered the tracks at length. Below, I’ve looked at three of the tracks from the many on X-Theory that I’ve just heard for the first time.

Timetube Travel is the first I'll mention, as for me, it’s a track that could have easily come from Final Crisis, Xerxes’ end of the world, black hole-laced dystopian album. Timetube Travel opens with a really pleasing corrugated plastic tube-like sound, a bit like someone dragging said tube over a hard edge, or maybe like a really pissed off bumblebee flying around a hollow plastic thing. There is a bassy, deep quality beneath the sound, and it soon gives way to a metallic dragging and jostling. Near the end, the sounds change to a swelling, pulsing bass version of the plastic tube. The track seemed to convey the different stages of travelling down one of these worm-hole type tubes. If we ever discover or create real time tubes, and get to travel down them, I’d like to think that they might sound like this.

(Sur)Realization is a track originally from the album Xenophillis, and for me, is another great track that excels at making the listener feel like they are traversing some strange space. It begins with a deep drone that roams the soundscape like a moody animal, with little sparkles or tinkles of electronic tone jittering in the air above it. It’s a soundscape where the low and the high have an uneasy meeting in the middle, maybe the audio equivalent of an anti-matter ocean in which certain waves boil up to meet our reality. Who knows, but whatever is going on, it sounds like a fun space to listen to on an album. Maybe not so fun to visit in reality though, if that were even possible.

The final track I will mention is something a bit different. Dimmer was originally released on the album DIM, and is a more frenetic creation. While I do find myself gravitating to Xerxes’ more brooding soundscapes, Dimmer is a fast-paced, retro-feeling, somewhat jaunty track that I found got stuck in my mind. It opens with an electronic melody that gets loud enough to feel almost uncomfortable, but then fades a little when lower tones join in. This track has a feeling of massive momentum, and the grainy distortion of the tones just gives it even more charm. Maybe it’s a radio broadcast from another universe, or maybe it’s a dimension jumper’s soundtrack of choice before they engage their mini-black hole-fuelled jump device. It’s a track that feels bright and vigorous, with a retro aesthetic that wouldn’t be amiss as the theme to a Netflix nostalgia-fuelled sci-fi series.

As you can see, X-Theory (Best of 2005-2020) is a great collection of some of Xerxes The Dark’s ambient creations. For me, it helped get me acquainted with some of his earlier work that I had missed, and also, in the case of Dimmer, saw me revisit an album that I should have paid more attention to, but that I didn’t feel was my type of thing at the time I came across it. I guess I’m saying that X-Theory is a gateway drug to Xerxes’ other works, smoothing the way for them to infest your mind. I’d bet that’s his plan anyway...

Visit the X-Theory (Best of 2005-2020) page on Bandcamp for more information. You can also watch the X-Theory Excerpt Video below:

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: X-Theory (Best of 2005-2020)

Album Artist: Xerxes The Dark

Released: 04 Dec 2020