Dark Ambient Review: Reflections at the Sea

Review By Casey Douglass

I’ve always had as much time for urban environments as I have for the peace or bleakness of nature. Even though beautiful vistas have their place, there is a lot to be said for a small park backed by the thrum of traffic in a busy city. Reflections at the Sea is a dark ambient album from SiJ and Textere Oris, an album that, at its very core, brings these two forces together.

The album description tells of a person who wants to see the sea. Sadly, they are living alone in a big city. One day, a fog blankets the concrete, glass and metal around them. The environment feels different, and as the album plays, the fog seems to bring said person to a place in which their fantasies are almost at hand.

For me, Reflections at the Sea is an album that feels light and peaceful. There are field-recorded sounds of church bells and people talking, but there are also soothing drones, pipe or flute-like tones, and pleasant vocals. These elements make the fog envisioned in the album description one that is illuminated by golden sunlight, rather than a dreary, damp smothering greyness that fogs so often can become.

I think that I’d have to say that Train Leaves in the Rain is my favourite track. It opens with a chiming, undulating space, and a mellow low tone. A “staticy” rain emerges, a voice crackling through a tannoy system joining it. A smooth drone sits beneath everything, floating female vocals and train sounds sitting comfortably among the various plucked notes that occur in the latter half. This is a peaceful track, and one which merges the mechanical with the ethereal with adept ease.

Veter 101 is another of the tracks that stood out for me. It also makes use of a tannoy-style announcement. A small tone sounds, like a mouse trying to clear dust from a pipe. A muted buzzing shortly follows, making me thing of a tiny dot matrix printer spooling out tiny receipts. Okay, my mind is now thinking about mice buying train-tickets for their own micro train. This track is features a plucked melody, piano notes, and a variety of voices. It has an energetic feeling, but like the Train Leaves in the Rain, it seems to merge a variety of mechanical recordings with pleasing light tones.

Finally, the track K Moryu is the last I will mention. It’s a track where the sea very much makes its presence known. It begins with a high whistling tone, lapping waves, a deep beat and a male vocal. The cascading rattle of a rain-stick sounds at intervals, a variety of instruments playing their own particular notes and melodies throughout the track. This is the longest track on the album, sitting at almost twelve minutes in length, and it gives the listener ample time to bathe in the lulling qualities it provides.

Reflections at the Sea is the ideal kind of album for anyone who might be stuck somewhere and would love to be somewhere else. It offers that “world at a distance” feeling, when the weather or other circumstances make the familiar seem a bit different, when the usual view down the road is changed by fog, and you get the feeling that somewhere else might just have moved in to take its place, even if just for a little while.

Visit the Reflections at the Sea page on Bandcamp for more information. You can also listen to Train Leaves in the Rain below:

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Reflections at the Sea

Album Artists: SiJ & Textere Oris

Label: Cryo Chamber

Released: 20 April 2021

Dark Ambient News: Cryo Chamber Field Recording Sale

Dark Ambient News: Cryo Chamber Field Recording Sale

I nearly always love dark ambient music that features plenty of field recording, whether it's the sound of the wind rustling leaves in a forest, or the rumble of traffic on a rainy day, it just deepens the soundscape so much.

Cryo Chamber has just shaved 50% off four albums that are field recording heavy: Eximia - Visitors, Creation VI - Deus Sive Natura, ProtoU - Khmaoch and SiJ & Textere Oris - Reflections under the Sky. As they are all albums that I've previously reviewed, the links are to said reviews.

If you want to take advantage of these offers, head to Cryo Chamber's Bandcamp page here.

Dark Music Review – Reflections Under The Sky

Review Written By Casey Douglass

A collaboration between Moscow based Textere Oris and Ukrainian project SiJ comes this field recording focused release. A merger of warm tape noise fused recordings and analogue acoustics, it paints a larger than life picture of nature with a warm but at times brooding backdrop with and overlay of sacral vocals.

Reflections Under The Sky is a gentle listen, the focus on field recordings of rain and water lulling the mind while the echoes and beats wash over the listener. I always tend to lean toward dark ambient albums that use nature recordings and other “real world” sounds as accompaniment to their darker tones, so from the start, I felt quite warmly towards this album.

A striking example of this can be found in the track “Lost”, a track that begins with a blaring horn-type sound and then features the sounds of birdsong and the empty interference patterns of a de-tuned radio. Sacral vocals begin to ebb and flow around a deeper beat, painting the picture of someone lost in nature, far from technology or other people. There are other sounds too, snatches of voices, drums, footsteps and thunder but all conspire to paint a lonely, possibly hallucinatory picture.

Another track that I really enjoyed was “In The Rain”, a composition that starts with gentle rain, what sounds like distant voices, and a low key electronic humming. Then a light drone and a melody joins, along with the odd metallic dripping and clattering. The track’s tone harshens a little in the second half, the track ending with the sound of passing cars splashing through heavy puddles. An atmospheric and enjoyable track that lets the listener appreciate that they aren’t actually walking home beside a busy flooded road.

The final track that I wanted to mention was the static infused “First Snow”, a track that uses a cascade of rain and chimes or bells tolling, with distant flutes of some kind joining later. The track is relaxing, just as most of them are, but it certainly has a dark undertone for all the peaceful sounds it contains, which is quite remarkable.

Reflections Under The Sky is a fantastic listen, especially when the weather outside your own window might match what is going on inside the soundscapes you are listening to. It’s harsh in places, but not in a jarring way, and its use of field recordings as a firm basis for the compositions to be constructed on or around is genuinely enjoyable. If you enjoy more meditative and relaxing dark ambient music, Reflections Under The Sky is probably a great choice for you. Even if you don’t tend towards that kind of sound, it is still well worth your time. I give it 4.5/5.

Check out Reflections Under The Sky on bandcamp at this link.

You can listen to “Lost” below:

I was given a free copy of this album to review.

Album Title: Reflections Under The Sky

Artists: SiJ & Textere Oris

Label : Cryo Chamber

Released: February 9, 2016

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