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.
A few weeks ago, I was
browsing my Bandcamp feed, and I saw The Owl’s dark ambient album
#44 - The Recluse slide into
view. I had a click through the three tracks and promptly decided
that this sounded like my kind of thing. It felt dense and
mind-filling, and after listening in more depth, I found that it had
the wonderful ability to push the thoughts out of my mind, stifling
the ever present merry-go-round of inner criticism and depressive
predictions.
#44 - The Recluse
is almost an hour long and is split into three tracks. The first is
Oh, Sweet Catharsis, a track that opens with a warm, low drone. The
soundscape felt like it had a rippling quality, maybe like the
interference lines of a pebble splashing into a pond, but slowed down
to a soothing, slo-mo rate. Lighter tones seem to emerge, suggesting
themselves above the bass. These grow, and put me a little in mind of
how a church organ might sound. A slight crackling of static soon
follows, and then things build and build, with various elements
distorting and seeming to compete with each other. At one moment the
vibrating bass seems to be the louder, and then the “organ”
flares up to out do it. This competing element, along with my notions
of the church organ, set up a kind of God Vs Satan contest, an
evolving audio tussle between two sides vying for control. That’s
not to say it’s a violent track, I found it very relaxing.
The
next track is Glacial Beauty. It might just be the suggestion I
picked up from the track title, but I do think that this track feels
cold. It opens with a low, airy, rumbling soundscape, one that
evolves to contain a variety of pulsing elements. A growing static
sits on top of this rumbling bass-line, making me think of midnight
in the arctic. A deeper vibration begins, not unlike a rough-burning
blue gas flame, if you dialled the sound up to mind-massaging levels.
Around one third of the way in, a lighter tone begins, floating above
the cold mental landscape like a seabird gliding above the frozen
scene. A continuous bag-pipe-like whine dances with the warping
higher tone of the seabird, the rough-burning gas flame a warm place
to enjoy the show. This track is the longest on the album at almost
27 minutes long. It’s long enough to be lulling and comforting, yet
also has enough elements to allow a variety of focusses. It builds
and evolves, just like the first track, but takes a longer time to
reach its peak, before simmering down to a calmer space in the final
few minutes.
The
third and final track is Emergence of Serenity. This track begins
with a low drone, but not quite as low as the others. This one is
more like a meditative chant, but there is a faster pulsing tone to
keep it company. If the first track began like slow ripples on a
pond, this one is the faster version. They culminate and then quietly
dip down into a melancholy peacefulness. The first part of this track
felt a little sci-fi to me. It had the whiff of space and vast
distance, with static fuzzing that distance. Near the midpoint,
things become more focussed on the bass end of the scale, a gritty
throbbing vibration spreading and pulsing through the mind. The other
tones come back with static, the distortion flapping in the
listener’s ears, before things settle a little for a milder ending.
#44 - The Recluse
is an album that creates some lovely, dense, walls of noise and
drone. I wasn’t sure how I would get on with some of the harsher
elements in some of the tracks, but they always felt like they stayed
just the right side of “vigorous” for me. It was during my second
listen (my non-note-taking session) that the album’s thought
muffling powers became truly apparent. I’m struggling to remember
another album that has engulfed my mind and yet also seen me nod off
to it, even at its harsher moments. This is the good kind of nodding
off by the way, not through boredom. #44 - The Recluse
is currently name your price on Bandcamp below. I suggest you check
it out if you like droning dark ambient with textures that bring
peace to your dark mind, even if just for awhile.
