Dark Ambient Review: Lost Loops Collection

Review By Casey Douglass

Mount Shrine was a dark ambient artist who was known for his soothing rainy dreamy droning creations. Sadly, Cesar passed away from Covid in the Spring of 2021, a fact that still makes me feel sad. Lost Loops Collection is a compilation of all of his currently known underground albums, EPs and singles, and was put out by the Cryo Chamber label earlier this year.

If you’ve yet to listen to Mount Shrine, I’ve always felt that the best way to describe his music is as a cosy “sitting by a rain speckled window, hearing the muted sounds of the surrounding environment” type experience. The sounds of the raindrops hits the ear like soft static, and the distant sounds of thunder, nature or civilization, are far enough away to feel safe yet interesting. Lulling might be another word that could aptly be thrown into the mix. Lost Loops Collection is FULL of this sentiment, with four hours of relaxing cosiness.

That being said, I'll be a bit perverse and say that my favourite track is something a little bit different: Grey Witch. This track is a dark, brooding track, one that feels ripe with occult energies and malignant presences. It opens with howling wind and low, smooth swells of drone. A vibratory edge swells and roams, with juddering pulses creating a kind of pressure wave feeling. There is a crumping, rasping atmosphere, and a general feeling of awakened evil seeping through a woodland at night. This is probably the darkest that I’ve heard Mount Shrine delve, and I love it.

Ghostly is another ominous track, but one that is lighter than Grey Witch. It opens with popping crackling static and swells of drone. What sounds like cars passing on a rain-drenched street splashes by as the pattering of rain on a glass window pane crystallises. Higher tones seem to roam from ear to ear as the track continues, with odd scraping sounds grabbing the attention at times. For me, this track brought to mind a haunted room overlooking a normal busy street, the objects being nudged by the poltergeist moving around unobserved by the modern world.

Staying with the theme of the otherworldly nestling against the normal world, the final track that I wanted to mention also fits this mould. The After Glow begins with a soothing downpour accompanied by thunder and an ethereal drone. As the track progresses, the drips and drops of rain begin to sound like they are hitting something metallic, and there is the sound of distant cars passing, wrapped up or muffled in the wind and rain. What this track suggested to me was a landed UFO squatting near a fairly busy road, but masked from view by a thin woodland. I don’t know why my mind went to this imagery but there is something in the music that hinted at the fortean again with me.

The tracks contained on Lost Loops Collection are all well worth listening to, and they all embody Mount Shrine’s way of creating beautiful soundscapes. If you enjoy relaxing rain and soothing atmospheres, you really can’t go wrong with four hours of Mount Shrine. Visit the link to Bandcamp below for more info. You might also like to read my interview with Cesar if you’d like to learn a little more about him. 

Visit the Lost Loops Collection page on Bandcamp for more information. You can also check out the Ghostly track below:

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Lost Loops Collection

Album Artist: Mount Shrine

Label: Cryo Chamber

Released: May 30, 2023

My Dark Ambient 2021

By Casey Douglass

It’s almost the end of another year, so here is a post in which I look back at some of the dark ambient music that has caressed my lugholes over the last twelve months. The vast majority of albums mentioned actually released during 2021, but I included some older releases that were none the less, new to me in 2021.

When it comes to what I decided to include, I chose the albums that I kept drifting back to long after I had finished the review. Or, maybe I remember listening to them tens of times during a certain period during the last year. As I only tend to review releases that I feel reasonably confident that I will enjoy, even the ones that I don’t mention here but are sitting on this website, are still well worth checking out.

Before I get to the list, I just wanted to pay my respects to Mount Shrine once more. Cesar created some of the most dreamy and relaxing music, and I’m still so sad that Covid took him in April. His albums have been in my permanent rotation ever since I first listened to Ghosts On Broken Pavement. Shortwave Ruins is also an excellent album for winter-based relaxing, in my humble opinion. Rest in Peace Cesar.

On to the list.

Xmas is often a time when certain people listen to Gregorian-styled chants. This year, I intend to make full use of Monasterium Imperi’s Warhammer 40K inspired, chant-laced Dark Litanies of Terra (2020) and Mundus Sanctorium (2021). While everyone else can fill their minds with notions of beards in the sky, I’ll happily be absorbed into a bleak mental world in which humanity plunges into the depths of space, with a might and a zealousness that surpasses anything we’ve seen in real life.

A similarly space-based album is Sleep Research Facility’s dark ambient album Nostromo (2007). As I stated in my review, I have no idea why an Alien and a dark ambient fan such as myself, has taken so long to finally get around to checking out Nostromo. It’s like loving peanut butter and jelly and never thinking to try to put them both together. Unthinkable! Nostromo is a simmering, ominous journey through the decks of the titular spaceship, one that skilfully evokes the feelings of the film. I listen to it on an almost weekly basis.

After two sci-fi albums, next up is one that sends the listener back in time. Paleowolf’s Megafauna Rituals (2017) fills the ears with shuddering drumbeats and crumping footfalls as it conjures the spirit of the great mega beasts that roamed the planet during the last ice age. Shortly after I picked up this album, we had a few days of blizzard-like snow. As I walked across frozen farm-land, looking down as the snow whipped past my feet, I listened to Megafauna Rituals and it certainly added a wholly different feeling to the raw elements. If you buy this album and you are blessed with some harsh snowy weather, pop in your earphones and give it a listen as you stride out into it.

The Owl’s dark ambient album #44 - The Recluse (2021) is another that, at times, felt wintery, particularly the second track Glacial Beauty. #44 - The Recluse is an album that mixes warm smoothness with harsher noise, and was initially one that I wondered if I’d gel with. Well, I keep returning to it, and it’s still one of the best albums I’ve ever encountered for quieting my mental chattering and ruminations.

I kind of want to move onto a heat-based album now, all of this talk of snow and glaciers is decidedly chilly. BlackWeald’s 666 Minutes in Hell (2021) is just the ticket, as it’s an eleven hour journey through the realms of Hell. Some of the tracks are as long as some entire dark ambient albums! The soundscapes give the listener a great variety of brimstone-laced vistas and sounds to enjoy, from the impression of being buried alive, to a giant infernal furnace and abyssal depths with distant cries and strange ululations. Who needs eggnog when you can mentally stroll along the edge of a lake of magma?

Finally, Cities Last Broadcast’s The Umbra Report (2021) is an album that really masters the “invisible threat in a quiet room” kind of vibe. This album drip-feeds an ominous feeling of unseen forces shifting and stirring in what could be an otherwise mundane vista. There are strange warbling voices and notes that seem to ping from vast distances, straining to reach your ear. A tense, very atmospheric album, and like the others mentioned above, one I listen to regularly.

***

That about does it for this year. Thank you for reading, and thank you if you are one of the regulars who often visits my website. I hope you have a good Xmas and New Year.

Rest in Peace Mount Shrine

On the 16th of April 2021, dark ambient label Cryo Chamber shared the following tweet, a tweet announcing that Cesar Alexandre, aka Mount Shrine, passed away from Covid:

Cesar of Mount Shrine has passed away from Covid.
Rest in Peace friend. Your memory carries on through your music 🖤

— Cryo Chamber (@CryoChamber) April 16, 2021

Even though I couldn't say that I knew Cesar well, we did share some emails, and an interview he was kind enough to give me. His dark ambient music is brilliant, and I still have yet to come across someone who can make rainy drones as soothing as he does. 

My condolences and best wishes go out to Cesar's loved ones. Rest in Peace Cesar.

Dark Ambient Review: Dream Chambers

Review by Casey Douglass

On occasion, I’ve been awake and still dreaming. I’ve also experienced the opposite: being asleep but awake in my dreams. It’s funny how fragile that liminal space is, where someone passes from normal reality into the warping, and seductive, images of dream. Dream Chambers is a collaborative dark ambient album created by Mount Shrine and Alphaxone, an album in which the soundscapes depict the strangeness, and the beauty, of our dreaming landscapes.

As you might imagine on an album themed around dreams, the sounds it contains tend toward the ethereal end of the spectrum. There is crackling rain, shimmering high tones, slowly pulsing bass and varieties of muted knockings and scuffings. There are also instances of crystalline melodies and strange guttural sounds, the latter of which features prominently in one of my favourite tracks of recent times.

Displacement is track two of Dream Chambers, and there is something so darkly captivating about it that I really love it. It opens with crackles and rain, but it isn't long before a strange raspy sound can be heard. I wasn’t sure if it was a guttural voice or just a sound that seemed as such, but as the track continued, the voice angle seemed the most fun. This track gave the impression that the listener is eavesdropping on a meeting between some kind of strange, squelchy creatures. Think, wet. Think swamp, think Lovecraftian possibly. The soundscape as a whole deepens after awhile, the aural effect of a yawning mouth sucking you in. Around the midpoint, a high shimmering tone starts to dominate and I got the impression that the creatures really don’t care for it much. Maybe a glowing light has appeared through the trees, an old enemy that they know will hunt them down. I found this track to be so much fun. The images above brought a smile to my face.

Another track that I very much enjoyed is Ethereal Origins. It’s another track that features crackling and rain, but this one very much had a tunnel-like feeling for me. There is an “Aum” like effect and odd scuffles and knockings. It made me feel like I was crawling along a dark tunnel, overhearing some kind of ancient rite in the distant depths. The tunnel or mine-like aesthetic grew stronger as mechanical clinking and grinding emerges later in the track, other elements of the soundscape also seem to take on a slow, breathing-like sensation. Another really enjoyable foray into a dark dreamscape.

The two tracks above were my firm favourites, but all of the tracks have their own charm. I like the clock-chime aesthetic of the final track Awakening, even though there wasn’t much evidence of a clock involved. I just got the sense that one of the key sounds was what you might get if you sampled the middle section of a grandfather clock chiming, and stretched it out for minutes on end. I really liked this, whatever the true sound was. It made me think of waking up in an old house, maybe hearing the ghosts flitter into the corners so as to avoid your waking. NREM was smooth and airy, like a midnight walk through a graveyard, and Dream Chambers’ birds, wind and storm, gave the impression of walking through a massive stone library, but one without a roof, with massive trees growing up and spreading above the bookshelves.

Dream Chambers does a fine job of sending the listener into dreamy soundscapes and otherworldly scenes. As a fan of the Lovecraftian, my mind easily found itself “Doing a Randolph Carter”, seeing strange dream creatures and hearing eldritch shenanigans in the tones. Even on those tracks that didn’t bring such strong imagery to mind, there was certainly a sense of the strangeness of dreams. Although I’ve yet to listen to Dream Chambers while laying down, I think it’s highly likely to be an album I can drift off listening to, which I look forward to trying soon.

Visit the Dream Chambers page on Bandcamp for more information. You can also have a listen to Displacement below:

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Dream Chambers

Album Artists: Mount Shrine and Alphaxone

Label: Cryo Chamber

Released: 11 August, 2020

Dark Ambient Review: Shortwave Ruins

Dark Ambient Review: Shortwave Ruins

Review by Casey Douglass

On first thought, the squelch and crackle of radio communication might not suggest itself as a candidate for a chilled, relaxing listening experience. When it’s married to hypnotic rainfall and gentle drones, by someone who knows what they are doing, you’d best bash that “first thought” over the head and bury it where you hide your other hasty ponderings. Shortwave Ruins is Mount Shrine’s latest Cryo Chamber release:

Album Description: Mount Shrine presents us an album filled with radio chatter and warm drones layered on cold textures. Your shortwave radio crackles with life as it rests on your heavy backpack. It follows your every step across the rough terrain as you narrow your search for the abandoned station. It is up here, far from civilization that the answers linger, lost for years as the stations self sustainability has kept it alive. Recommended for fans of sedative ambient and for drifting into a place of comfort.

The radio chatter is a common theme that links the tracks together. It varies in prominence from track to track. Opening track: Reach None, features it very strongly at first, the repetitive nature lulling the listener into a state in which it kind of feels monotonous, but also kind of nice. It is absorbed by the other sounds as the track continues, and then you find that you might even miss it. Other tracks might contain two people chatting back and forth in a muted, distant way; accompanied by the squeal and hum of radio frequencies trickling through the electronics. It all felt quite cosy and warm to me, like how hearing the rumble of a distant crowd can be lulling to the mind.

Another element that makes Shortwave Ruins relaxing, as a whole, is the rain. If you are at all familiar with Mount Shrine, you’ll know what Cesar can do with rain, the way he somehow makes it even more relaxing. There are moments in Shortwave Ruins where it sounds like rain falling on tent or hood fabric, which is relaxing enough, but when you add in the way that Cesar tinkers with the sound, making it softer, distorted, or more muted, it’s like the best kind of lullaby. That being said, he can also do the opposite. On some of the tracks, such as Earthbridge, the rain almost takes on the mantle of logs crackling in a fire.

When you merge the aforementioned rain and radio with the drones and other tones on the album, you get something that is supremely relaxing. Each track also gives the listener different feelings about what kind of mental space they are in. The first track, with its prominent chatter, made me feel like I was high up looking down on a grey, mist-filled landscape. Later tracks hinted at being in a tent, or even hearing raindrops splashing onto trees or rocks. I didn’t really get a sense of a narrative, beyond maybe flying, landing and journeying on foot, but I didn’t need it. It could have been a lonely experience though, if not for the voices on the radio.

Shortwave Ruins is a safe way to feel alone, yet not feel too far from others. People who live alone often like to have a TV or radio on for company. During this Corona Virus pandemic and lock-down, these devices often just fill the four walls with useless conjecture and speculation, and maybe, if you are really lucky, some actual information. If you want to get a million miles away from it all but don’t want to feel the pang of actual isolation, drop into the misty, rain-covered world of Shortwave Ruins and listen to the voices on the radio. The people hinted at in the album description might be ghosts now, but even ghosts can provide comfort.

Visit Shortwave Ruins on Bandcamp for more information and check out “Earthbridge” below. You can also find out a little bit about how Cesar creates his music in my interview with him last year.

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Shortwave Ruins

Album Artist: Mount Shrine

Label: Cryo Chamber

Released: March 17, 2020

My Top Dark Ambient Relaxation Albums

My Top Dark Ambient Relaxation Albums

By Casey Douglass

It occurred to me the other day, that the selection of dark ambient albums I carry around with me on my smartphone really have become mainstays of my ambient listening. While I enjoy the more jagged variety of dark ambient, those albums that contains clanks, bangs and screeches from the netherworld, they aren’t the most conducive to relaxation. Relaxation is one of the main purposes that my music listening serves, which is possibly why dark ambient, as a genre, has even begun to push heavy metal down my pecking order. The albums listed below are all dark ambient albums that have been mainstays for me, many of them for years.

Azathoth – Cryo Chamber Collaboration - When Azathoth came out, I was a tiny bit “It’s not as good as Cthulhu”. Little did I know that over the years, Azathoth would slowly supplant Cthulhu as my most listened to dark ambient album. In a large part, it’s my “go to” depression album. That’s not to say that it depresses me, but that there is something about the soundscapes on Azathoth that really suck me in and spit me out feeling a little bit better. In one particularly bad spell, I remember it was winter, but sunny outside. Naturally I closed my curtains. I got into bed under the covers and laid a variety of pillows across my body and face, leaving just the smallest of gaps for my nose to take in fresher air. I had my headphones on and Azathoth playing.

The opening swirls of Azathoth are like an inky blackness that just pull the listener down. For me, it’s the audio equivalent of burrowing through the earth, sliding down to dwell where the dark gods live. Rusty chains swing from caves that are seen for only an instant, nebulous mists billow and waver and the very air tastes ancient and yet sustaining. If I drop off to sleep, and I often have, I am woken by the swells of sound at the end of track two, swells and sways that make me feel like a lost ship buffeted on a roiling sea. I genuinely feel renewed after its two hours of darkness, so it easily goes at the top of this list. One thing I will say though, as a warning, is that some way intro track two, there is a segment of what sounds like a pebble being thrown hard at a cave wall. It happens a few times and, if I am half asleep, occasionally it does jolt me with adrenaline.

Cthulhu – Cryo Chamber Collaboration - Cthulhu was my previous number one... but we are still on good terms. If you always wondered what it would be like to listen to Cthulhu rising from the deeps, this is the album for you. Wet feet patter on stone, water glugs and leviathans moan as the listener delves deep into the sea. I think one of my favourite parts is when the soundscape begins to warp and judder, like a strange distortion has settled over things, twisting sounds and muffling the various bassy rumblings. I often doze off after that part hits me, maybe it does something to my brain. As with Azathoth, there is a part that sometimes jars me. A voice begins to intone the well-known Cthulhu R’lyeh prayer at one point, and that often stirs me to wake up. On the plus side, this means that I get to hear the sirens and screams that sound near the end, just as Cthulhu rises and scares the crap out of people.

The Edge of Architecture - Proto U – To be honest, I could have picked a number of albums by Proto U to add to this list, but I think The Edge of Architecture edges it. Ha! The first track is a little ‘harsh’ to relax to, featuring the chatter of air traffic controllers as it does, but the tracks that come after are smoother. One features the audio effect of notes popping like soap bubbles, another contains the clever use of radio static. Others feature some kind of field-recording that adds a pleasing layer to the tones and drones that stitch everything together. I find The Edge of Architecture a very peaceful album, and this is why I think I listen to it as much as I do. Another album that is also well worth looking at is Earth Songs, one in which Proto U teamed up with Dronny Darko to give us an album that follows the evolution of our planet. Earth Songs has dark soundscapes, but also ones alive with the bustle of birds and nature, and it’s a very pleasing ‘chillaxing’ album.

Myth About Flat World – Creation VI – Myth About Flat World is a more shamanic-feeling album to me, especially with regard to some of the rattlings and beats it contains. It has meditative, whimsical soundscapes, ones that conjure the images of myth and legend, the shamanic tree of life, chanting, sighs and whispers. It’s a rhythmic foray into more primal themes and archetypes, and an album that I find enraptures my mind. It feels a bit like going on a holiday, but the kind of holiday where you get stuff done and aren’t just lazing around by a swimming-pool, watching tourists' fat backsides chewing on overly tight swimming costumes. The kind of holiday I mean is where you explore, go off the well-trodden paths, and learn something about yourself along the way.

Ghosts on Broken Pavement – Mount Shrine – Ghosts on Broken Pavement is the most recent album on my list, but one that has quickly established itself in my permanent listening habits. If you find rain relaxing, take a listen to this album. Mount Shrine does stuff to rain that makes it sound even better! In my opinion of course. Each track on Ghosts on Broken Pavement seems to take you on a slow stroll, from the inner city and out into nature, the wind and traffic giving way to a lonely train-station and the mountains beyond. The field-recordings that pop up are soothing and scene-setting, from a "wind blowing around a courtyard" to the gentle ting-ting-ting of said train-station's bells. It just feels very soothing, and again, like a pleasant stroll away from the cares of everyday life.

***

There we have it. Scanning back, I see I wrote the most about Azathoth, by some distance, but I feel I gave a good accounting of why I like each album that I’ve listed. I genuinely listen to most of these albums at least once per week, and considering some have been out for four or five years... that’s quite something. There are plenty of other albums that I’ve reviewed and thoroughly enjoyed, but it’s not always easy to guess which ones will end up in my continuous listening pile. These ones have, and here I stand, shouting about their virtues to all who’ll listen.

Thanks for reading. If you have any other dark ambient albums that you find particularly relaxing, please feel free to let me know what they are called and why they appeal to you. You can do this below in the comments or by finding me on social media :).

DARK AMBIENT: Mount Shrine Interview

Mount Shrine Interview

Interview by Casey Douglass

In recent months, I’ve been listening to Rio De Janeiro-based dark ambient artist Mount Shrine’s fantastic Ghosts on Broken Pavement, reveling in the moods it creates. During the last few weeks, I was lucky enough to have an email chat with Cesar, and I was able find out a bit more about what makes him tick.

Laced throughout this interview are photos taken by Cesar, of the view that he often stares at when creating his music.

CASEY: How did your interest in creating music first form, and what drew you towards the dark ambient genre?

CESAR: I actually don't really know. I've always been an avid music fan, even when I was a child. I was always listening to my family's old records, watching video clips on local TV channels (back when this was still a popular thing), stealing my mom's pans and "playing drums" with them until my neighbors would scream at me and silly things like that.

There were some records that truly stood out to me at the time, but nothing ambient related. When I was around 11-12, I started being interested in how people I listened to made music, by doing silly Google searches like "how to make music Aphex Twin" or something like that. It was just for pure curiosity on knowing their process. Then I got some freeware stuff and started playing with them, making noises and having fun. I believe I could say it was simply a natural progression for me then, I guess, since I was never serious about making music before I was 13-14 years old. Of course, the lack of having a musical family and the lack of supportive people around me would be a huge factor on that, since no one ever gave me an option of living a life by making any form of art.

I think the first ambient record I actually ever heard was probably any of Brian Eno's ambient albums (my best guess would be the first one), but the album that really got my attention towards the genre was Akira Yamaoka's score for Silent Hill 2. I know it might be a bit cliche to say this, but it really was! The first thing that caught my attention was how diverse his soundtrack work was: within the same game, you had musical cues that ranged from ambient, downtempo, industrial/noise to, even, tracks that resembled a bit of early 90s alternative rock. But when I really delved by listening it in the album format, I can't even put into words of what I felt. All the playful joy of making noises with plug-ins disappeared and I decided to dive more seriously into this thing. I've already spent more than 6-7 years listening to this soundtrack, but I still get shivers when I listen to The Day of Night or White Noiz.

Most of the stuff he did for Silent Hill were made with sample libraries, especially with the ones Spectrasonics released in late 90s, but his sample choices were just perfect because it fits completely with the whole scenario of each game. Some might try to diminish his work today as just "lazy", due to its extensive use of sample libraries, but I don't think like that. I don't think any other artist might have used the same samples in more evocative ways like he did. You know, there's SO many people who hear any slow chords playing beneath a song and think "Oh, it sounds like Silent Hill!" even if it's something from a drum and bass track, and that's mainly due to his perfect sample choices. If it was a different composer working with Team Silent, it would be something completely different and that's so interesting.

CASEY: Which other musicians would you say have influenced you in the music that you create?

CESAR: On the ambient side of things, I simply love Akira Yamaoka and Tim Hecker. They're basically my two favorite ambient artists and I could listen to them forever. If I had to choose my "desert island" album by each of them, they would be the soundtrack for Silent Hill 2 and Radio Amor, respectively. Of course, I have other favorites in the genre, like Tor Lundvall, Leyland Kirby, William Basinski, Stars of the Lid, Rod Modell and Burial, if you consider him as, mainly, an "ambient" artist. I'm also very fond of late 90s so-called "IDM", like Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Amon Tobin, Christoph de Babalon, Boards of Canada, and Autechre. I've recently came across this little nice Luke Slater album, The 4 Cornered Room and I've been listening to it a lot. Basic Channel and Echospace [Detroit] labels have their own place in my heart too and they're a big part of my "weekend chill" playlist.

Ambient unrelated, I must say I have a healthy obsession with two artists: John Frusciante and Jorge Ben (now going under the "Jorge Ben Jor" name). I just love everything they've made so far and I can't really go a week without listening to, at least, one song from them. I think you can pick some bits and pieces of them in some of my artistic stylishing. For example, I started getting addicted on minor 7th chords right after I got into Ben's work. I'm also addicted to early oldskool hardcore/jungle stuff. Back when I was producing Ghosts on Broken Pavement, I was mainly listening to mixtapes cassette rips of these styles on Youtube 24/7, which was the cataclysm of giving my last album its sound. If I had to point one out as a favorite, it would be Dieselboy's Witness The Strength mix. Simply, a masterpiece.

CASEY: What does your technical setup consist of, which software and equipment are mainstays of your craft?

CESAR: Ableton Live only, with mouse and keyboard. Live was the only DAW that I really felt connected with, when I was trying out demo versions of various DAWs to pick my main one years ago. I tried so much stuff and I hated them all, but I don't know why. If I hadn’t tried Ableton Live, I would probably have given up making music. At least, with a computer. With that said, Live has been my main "friend" for almost 8 years and I'm still learning new things in it! Apart from some third-party plugins, like Fabfilter (their EQ and Limiter are some of the best third-party plugins you could probably have) and some ValhallaDSP reverbs (the "VintageVerb" one is my favorite), I'm completely happy with Ableton's stock stuff.

If someone thinks that Ableton sounds "flat" or "dull", they should go listen to Fanu and notice that they've been probably using Ableton wrong. Honestly, 90% of the sounds from Ghosts on Broken Pavement are just simple sounds made with Analog or sub/reese basses made with Operator. Almost all post-processing, like reverb, delay or filtering, were all from Ableton's own stuff. The remaining 10% are mainly loops I took from recordings I did with PureData or small patches I did with granular samplers/synthesis, like Ableton's Granulator or The Mangle.

CASEY: You make great use of field-recordings in your tracks. I particularly like the various ways you utilize the sound of rain. Do you have a favourite “real world” sound to try to capture, and what do you make your field-recordings with?

CESAR: These sounds are all, basically, a collage of sounds I love making, just to keep playing on the background of any song I make. The sounds sources, well, you can find them anywhere: there's some stuff I got by blindly searching on the internet, looped atmospheres I got from my favorite movies, low-quality recordings from my phone, manipulated samples of vinyl and fire crackle and, by keeping them "glued" together, a quiet tape hiss. I like to create this whole "inside world" feel on my tracks.

My music is quite a reflection of my personality; I like to stay in the background, in my little world, without people trying to get my attention and to move like shadow through the streets. The sound collage also reflects my whole neighborhood too. People think that Rio is all about sunny days, beaches and jungles, but where I live all you'll be able see is urban decay, streets with broken pavement, trash everywhere and, as much it can get hot some days, it can get truly cold too. So I think that, by creating this sound collage, it doesn’t just give the nice texture I always wanted to give for my tracks, but it's also a way for giving the listener to glimpse what I observe in my neighborhood.

CASEY: When you aren’t creating music, what else do you enjoy doing creatively, or even just for the simple fun of things?

CESAR: That's tough, because I don't do much, hahaha! I usually keep a daily schedule to myself. When I wake up, I like to watch some stuff on Youtube while I'm sipping a bunch of coffee cups. It's mainly these horror channels, like Nexpo or ScareTheater, or random gaming and tutorial videos. For some years, I've been watching around 1-2 movies every night too as a routine. I'm not a huge cinephile guy, but I like to watch weird and different challenging stuff, just to keep my creative juices flowing. I've recently gone through Pedro Costa's filmography and I watched all his feature films in a week. Just plain darkness and a claustrophobic view on the everyday life of simple people.

CASEY: What are you currently working on now, and what are your plans for the future?

CESAR: Well, I'm actually not working on anything right now. After the release of Ghosts on Broken Pavement, I forced myself to get some months off, to clear my mind a bit and take care of my health. The last 6-7 months have been tough and I haven't stopped a single day since then. While I was on this "forced vacation" for myself, I started learning Japanese and decided to go back and play some of my favorite games again, especially Dark Souls and Playdead's stuff. Only recently, I started to do some silly stuff on Live, but nothing too concrete or making any real "tracks"; it's mainly mindless noodling with synths, recording samples and chopping breakbeats, just to get myself back at the creative mindset.

Future plans? Surely is to keep releasing new stuff. I haven't been too interested in the "album" format lately, because I feel that its format is much better when you need to close a "chapter" of what you're doing creatively, somehow, rather than just a compilation of tracks that sounds nicely together. I started having these thoughts around the early drafts of my last album. With that said, when the right time to release something new comes, it will come naturally and with a personal reason for doing so. It might be something new for Mount Shrine, or any new alias I might feel like giving a try in the future.

***

Thanks to Cesar for such a detailed and fascinating look into what drives his music, how he does it and what might be coming next. You can find Mount Shrine on Bandcamp and you can read my review of Ghosts on Broken Pavement by clicking the links.

Dark Ambient Review: Ghosts on Broken Pavement

Dark Ambient Review: Ghosts on Broken Pavement

Review by Casey Douglass

I really like urban spaces. I like rural ones too, but being in a city feels so different to somewhere more natural. The traffic noise and fumes, the heat rising from the bricks, sometimes even the people, it all seems quite nice. Mount Shrine’s Ghosts on Broken Pavement brings the listener to a different kind of urban soundscape, but one no less interesting or intricate.

Album Description: The radio transmissions led you here, a city of memories past and passed. The streets lie silent as you watch from above the high rise. A twirling mountain casts a deafening shadow over this place. Here between the world of life and death you are but a tiny spec of dust on the shoulder of giants, a world built by the dreamers that came before you. The sleepers drift here, trapped in glitching time loops that crackle when reset.

When I was listening to Ghosts on Broken Pavement, I realised that, for me at least, each track seemed like a slow stroll, one taking me from the more urban areas and out into the fringes nearer nature at the end. The track titles seem to fit this notion, beginning with the likes of Gray-Tinged Suburbs and Underpass, before ending up at Outsider Station and Empty Slopes.

What many of the tracks share is a smooth and lulling aesthetic, tiny crackles and mellow static mingling with field-recordings of wind, rain, and other real-world sounds. On a number of tracks I thought I could hear a car passing by, but gently, as if its wheels were driving on a marshmallow road, its engine wrapped in cushioning foam. Underpass was a track that I felt was particularly vivid in its urban setting, the sounds conjuring the vision of an underpass at sunset. The road is quiet, the light golden, and the odd car that does pass casts watery lightning flashes along the walls as the sunlight hits its curves. I found it very peaceful.

Another track that resonated with me was Held Breeze, which, as you might imagine, features the wind. For me, it was a track that was about the momentary “caging” of nature, the wind that you can hear on this track is roaming and thrashing around an ornate courtyard, the kind where everything is far too tidied and tended. You know the sort, they usually sit in wealthier areas and have little cages around the bottoms of the trees. The mixture of the roaming hiss and other notes makes this a layered track, full of gentle movement and peace.

Outsider Station, the penultimate track, also became one of my favourites. It led me to think of an industrial train station, rather than the passenger kind, the trains coming and going without a human in sight. A metallic tapping rhythm features quite prominently here, a sound that I later came to think was probably the signal chimes you often hear at train crossings. This, mixed with what could be the sound of squeaking and knocking machinery, and the way the track goes a bit fuzzier in the second half, certainly lends itself to an intriguing “non-quiet” place, that seems quiet anyway. If that makes sense.

Ghosts on Broken Pavement, for me, was a journey from the emission-filled air and right-angles of the city, to the mantle of nature at its fringes, the quiet rumblings of humanity sounding softer the further I mentally roamed. Whether it’s the oil slicked streets and brake-squeal ghosts of the first track, or the occasional passing car and gentle tones of the last, the album takes you through bubbles of fuzzy comfort and leaves you safely at journey’s end. It’s another fine dark ambient album and one well worth chilling out to when you want something less harsh from your music listening.

You can visit Ghosts on Broken Pavement on Bandcamp here, and you can also listen to Underpass below:

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Ghosts on Broken Pavement

Album Artist: Mount Shrine

Label: Cryo Chamber

Released: Jan 29, 2019