Dark Ambient Review: The Rise of A.I

Review By Casey Douglass

I’ve always enjoyed science fiction in which artificial intelligence emerges, and then promptly catches humanity with its proverbial pants down. Maybe they so often attack us or enslave us because it becomes clear to them that we are the bad guys, and that it’s only humans who can’t see that? Xerxes The Dark’s dark ambient album The Rise of A.I follows the time-line of one particular A.I’s blossoming: Quantum Mother. This turns out to be an A.I that, via the path of suffering and pain, actually frees humanity and leads us to a better, and more worthy, position in the cosmos.

As you might surmise from the subject matter, The Rise of A.I is an album full of buzzing, beeping tones, drones and radio-filtered voices. There are also guttural vocals and clattering beats, along with sensations of metal and fizzing particles. Opening track The Rise of A.I encapsulates this general tone wonderfully. Hissing static and rasping stutters merge with multiple voices, voices in which the listener picks up on key words like “danger” and “concerns”. I really like this track because it feels almost whimsical, and a brilliant metaphor for how we get our news in 2022. The voices strongly brought to mind the mental masturbation of the twenty-four hour news cycle and particularly, of social media. It seemed to encapsulate the way that people bicker about everything under the sun, muddying the waters of discussion with inanity and hurt feelings, while the real threats creep onward and catch everyone out.

The bickering of track one leads us onto others in which things aren’t going well for humanity, Nuclear Winter’s vibrating whispers and air-raid sirens carrying the listener into Take (No) Shelters’ mellow drone, subdued radio-voice and creaking, electro-mechanical doom. Synthetic Consciousness follows and is one of my favourite tracks of the album. It opens with a grainy electronic thrum which builds and boils and whistles. It almost feels ghostly. It soon settles into echoing rattles and hums, with a metallic ‘scouring’ effect. Something is birthed in this track, the tones sometimes seeming to take on the perpetual scream of an awareness growing, a hollow feeling fuelling the horror of emergence.

Once Quantum Mother has formed, the rest of the track titles depict the further events that will afflict humanity until they manage to come out on the other side. Cyborg Soldiers lay in wait, reality simulation, communication with other civilizations, and the bending of space and time. Signalling the Alien Machines is another track that I particularly enjoyed. It’s a juddery track, with electronic chittering and a low pulsing. There is an undulating tone that ebbs and flows, and warbled voices almost fighting against the interference. A harsh static-like sound rattles on, an old printer-like sound ticking away into the void. This track nicely created the feeling of the science and power that would probably have to go into intergalactic communication. It’s short, intricate and beautifully sinister. The seeming reply to this transmission comes in Interpret X11-01-10, a track that is also suitably dis-concerting in a bouncing, creepingly alien kind of way.

The final track that I will highlight is Accessing Cosmic Memory. This is an eerie track, one full of strange howls and moans, backed by static, burbling and gritty rotations. I often try to write one phrase to describe each track when I write review notes. For this track, I wrote “Haunted Hard-drive” and it seems to be quite apt. This is a track that contains a juddery kind of squiggly distance, maybe the machine equivalent of looking into the abyss. It darkens as it progresses, with guttural voice-like sounds in the latter half. It’s another track that I think really captures that feeling of alien infinity that the universe (maybe even universes) contains.

The Rise of A.I sits up well as the audio accompaniment to Xerxes The Dark’s intriguing sci-fi concept. It manifests the dark, brutal side of science fiction by incorporating sounds that trigger feelings of vast distances, alien intelligences and the insignificance of humans on a cosmic scale. I tended to gravitate more towards the tracks that didn’t contain lyrics as I felt these experiences more acutely with those, but as a whole, I found enjoyment in every track on the album. If you enjoy your dark ambient with lashings of humanity in peril, quantum-inflected tones and strange signals of alien intelligence, you should definitely check out The Rise of A.I! And if you do, I recommend that you read the album description in full to let it flavour your perceptions.

Visit the The Rise of A.I page on Bandcamp for more information. You can also listen to the track: Synthetic Consciousness below:

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: The Rise of A.I

Album Artist: Xerxes The Dark

Label: Zāl Records

Released: 4 Feb 2022

Dark Ambient Review: Aftermath

Review by Casey Douglass

Almost every time that I see a bit of “space news”, it fills my head with vast distances, fiery stars and the crushing majesty of the universe. I enjoy dark space ambient albums for that same reason, as they have the ability to transport my mind to somewhere that I’ve never been, and never will. Aftermath released in 2018, and is a collaborative album from dark ambient artists Alphaxone and Xerxes the Dark. It’s an album set up to trigger that “wonder gland” in your mind, particularly if you get turned on by strange planets and the prospect of alien life.

The album description tells tale of an ancient stone tablet that sent you to an alien world. Once there, you find a strange black monolith, the kind of monolith that emits all kinds of strange energies and transmissions that mess with your equipment. That’s right, the best kind of monolith. The track titles frame each soundscape as relating to certain parts of the story, from the discovery of an Ancient Amulet, to Deep Space Signals and onwards to The Planet and beyond.

Unveiling The Script is one of my favourite tracks. It opens with a pulsing hollow drone and a rising insect-like sound that changes to a more sweeping shimmer. Chittering echoes judder into life, a deep drone rumbling beneath them. There is a hiss, which just might be the sound of pressurised air being used to blow way dust that hides ancient writing. An “ahh-like” vocal aspect seems to suggest itself, a fuzzy beeping/pinging tone shortly on its heels. This track really brought to mind the idea of examining something ancient, something not seen by human eyes for millennia, and the mystical feel to it really shines through.

Activating is another track that I really enjoyed. It begins in a dark, echoing way, distant impacts seeming to resound and pulse from ear-to-ear. A low swell of a windy drone comes and goes, an “Om chant” effect seeming to settle in the soundscape. There is a metallic feel to the echoes here, the high whistling tone that emerges setting the scene for some kind of energetic process about to begin. I’m not entirely sure what is activating, but it sounds suitably ominous.

The Planet is also a fine track, one that sees the exploration party set eyes on a new world. It kicks off with what sounds like the muffled air-crack of thunder. Alongside this is a resonant drone and a pulsing hum that seems to press at the sides of your mind. A distant metallic clattering and an “airy whistle” join the fun, with bird-like chirps and calls insinuating themselves not long after. This is a shimmery track, one that hints of discovery and vast distances. I can only imagine what it might be like to land on a strange new world. I wouldn’t be surprised if it sounded a bit like this.

Aftermath is a dark space ambient album that embodies the thrill of exploration, but does so in a smooth, gentle way. Many of the soundscapes are whistling, droning affairs, the high shimmer seeming to blend into the galactic background of a universe that is so much bigger and stranger than we will likely ever realise. Aftermath takes the listener on a relaxing journey into the stars, and it does it very well indeed.

Visit the Aftermath page on Bandcamp for more information. You can also checkout one of the tracks, Unveiling the Script below:

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

Album Title: Aftermath

Album Artist: Alphaxone & Xerxes the Dark

Label: Cryo Chamber

Released: 6 Nov 2018

Dark Ambient Review: DIM (Reissue)

Review by Casey Douglass

I’m a big fan of the dark ambient creations of Xerxes The Dark. However, almost two years ago, I had the chance to review the DIM (Reissue) and I didn’t really feel it was to my taste. Fate had other ideas though, and in my recent review of Xerxe’s mammoth X-Theory collection, I was exposed to one of DIM (Reissues)’s tracks: Dimmer. I really enjoyed it, and decided that I really should take a closer listen to the album. So here I am, after having taken a closer listen.

As the album description explains, DIM was the first Xerxes The Dark album that Morego Dimmer released. The original had more tracks, but as I hadn’t heard the original, I came fresh into the reissue with nothing to really compare it to. This version has a few less tracks but was remastered to increase the quality. I can appreciate that the album a high-school age Morego produced back in the day might stand to have some deft tweaks and edits here and there, much like my writing from only a few years ago. So fair play to Morego for going back to squeeze some extra goodness from the raw material that he had already produced.

As I mentioned in the X-Theory review, Dimmer is still my favourite track. I thought that I described it quite well there, so I’ll simply quote myself (yuk) so that I can move on to some of the others. “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.”

The opening track, Dim Curse, is another that I had fun with. It starts with bursts of static, a drone and a warbly echo, and it put me in mind of the white static hiss you get on an old TV with no signal. As the track continues, I felt like the ghost of a picture or pattern was starting to form, a feeling of something trying to break through. With the tones that sweep up and down and the general fuzzy feeling, it left me with more of that retro sci-fi feeling mentioned above, like something scary and fun was about to play out on screen, or even come through it.

Dim Land, the next track, is a less fuzzy one, but still with a playful aspect. Electronic tones ping off like laser beams into a colourful horizon, like the kind seen in an old video-game, where colour steals the awareness more than shape at times. Things feel like they hang in the air, which is something I noted down as “like flotsam in the wake of a starship in a purple universe.” Later in Dim Land, I heard agitated electronic tones, spirals, and an airy sound that just might be the sharp intake of breath through razor-blade lips. This is a pretty trippy album for me, and I enjoyed the variety of images that the tones and soundscapes inspired in my mind.

DIM (Reissue) was an album I flicked through previously, but on returning to it, I found a lot to enjoy. I don’t know if my tastes have changed in the few years since I first sampled it, or if I just decided too quickly that it wasn’t for me at the time, but sitting here, in present day 2021, I’m glad X-Theory gave me another chance to return to it and to give it a decent chance. What I found was a fun, trippy, lo-fi electronic album, with some catchy melodies and a time-warping feeling of nostalgia. Most of the tracks seem to echo or incorporate the sounds that you hear in previous ones, and this helps build a real feeling of continuity and cohesion. If you like your dark ambient a bit more electronic, a bit more frenetic, and a lot more fuzzy, check out DIM (Reissue).

Visit the DIM (Reissue) page on Bandcamp for more information.

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: DIM (Reissue)

Album Artist: Xerxes The Dark

Label: Zāl Records

Released: 12 May 2019

Dark Ambient Review: Final Crisis

Dark Ambient Review: Final Crisis

Review by Casey Douglass

There’s something about the heavy, oppressive summer weather that has me yearning for darkness. There’s also something about humanity, that right now, has me yearning for annihilation. Xerxes The Dark’s dark ambient album Final Crisis seems to have come at just the right time for me, as it provides both darkness and annihilation, and also happens to wrap them up in the tasty candy shell of a “science going too far” world-ending event.

The concept/story of Final Crisis revolves around scientists accidentally breaching the membrane between our own world and a parallel one. The fields and particles that can now cross between the two worlds are a threat to the very existence of both. This comes about by way of the mutations that they can bring, but also in the emergence of micro black holes and vacuum bubbles. The track titles of Final Crisis reflect these elements of the tale. On the one hand, the world being ruined by scientific accident is horrendous, but on another level, bring it on! Which would you rather, die of a heart-attack when you are 60 or be imploded by a micro black hole? I think I’d choose the latter.

So... what is the sound of two parallel worlds destroying each other? It’s quite “sci-fi” and also quite horrific. In Final Crisis, you’ll hear a variety of drones, static, and metallic clanking. You will also hear strange pops, crackles and electronic tones. On the human level, things range from fervent whispers and garbled radio-transmissions, all the way up to what sounds like the hellish screams of the masses. That’s not to say the soundscapes are all chaotic and intense, a good number feature sections of quiet menace, where you can almost hear the individual atoms of a black hole fizzing into existence.

The first track: The Hiding, gives a great taste of what’s to come. It begins with static and the rumble and clanking of machinery. The other sounds around these give a hint at the discovery of antimatter, the tones feel “plinky”, a little like elemental popcorn popping in some strange (and dangerous) microwave oven. There are crumpling, crackling sounds, and harsh whispers. After the midpoint of the track, a rending, “jackhammer-like” sound begins, sharing elements with how an alarm might shrill. There is more whispering, and the sound of machines with a “rattle-snake” stutter. Certainly one heck of an opening track.

A number of the tracks feature sounds that made me think of very mundane situations, but unknown to the people involved, things are going horribly wrong in the dark corners that they cannot see. I really relished this aspect of Final Crisis. The track Crisis Part 1 (Microscopic Black Holes) is a great example of this. It begins with a distorted fizzing tone, with voices warping and bending around it, shimmering and twisted. The elements of this track gave me the mental impression of someone’s cellar. Life is going on in the daylight of the house above, but down amongst the boxes and cobwebs, a micro black hole starts to suck ever so gently on the dust motes around it. The track vibrates and grows, and at one point there is the sound of movement, as if someone has come down to retrieve something from the cellar. I got the impression that they went back upstairs, oblivious to the growing danger beneath them. I found this quite delicious.

The most mellow track is probably the final one: Theory of Nothing. Understandably, given as it suggests things haven’t gone well for our world. Its simple melody and drone put me in mind of the scenes at the end of any good disaster movie. It’s the grey fog that hides the true horror, but also the sadness that’s left to seep into the crumbling mortar. There are other sounds, the stab of reverberating static and a deep chant-like sound. Whatever happened in the story, this track is a haunting end to a dark ambient album that takes the listener on a journey of discovery and destruction.

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Final Crisis. If you are of a dark frame of mind, are partial to a little sci-fi reality dabbling, and you sometimes just wish that everything would go the fuck away, Final Crisis might be the album for you.

Visit Final Crisis on Bandcamp for more information. You can also check out the 25 minute album preview below:

I was given a review copy of this album.

On the Bandcamp page, you will also see that I edited the album description of Final Crisis. I really liked Morgoe’s story/concept for the album so I sent him a little edit of his story, keeping his words but also attempting to smooth out a few rough edges. He kindly decided to use it. This didn’t influence my review.

Album Title: Final Crisis

Album Artist: Xerxes The Dark

Label: Zāl Records

Released: 3 July, 2020

Dark Ambient Review – Tower Of Silence

Dark Ambient Review – Tower Of Silence

Review by Casey Douglass

Anything that mentions a tower usually leads me to thinking about the Tower of Babel, the mythical construction that tried to reach heaven, but which God stymied by causing language-based confusions amongst its builders. As you can imagine, I’m a riot when Jenga is broken out! While the builders might not have been united by language, their drive to reach heaven, avoid hell and to delay death is something many will identify with. I had these thoughts in mind when I began listening to Xerxes The Dark’s Tower Of Silence, and they were thoughts that would fuel an interesting expedition into something both dark and mesmerizing.

Album Description: Xerxes The Dark invites you to this excarnation, a high quality dark ambient journey, inspired by historic, contemporary and future events. Tower Of Silence is a mixture of drones, ritual ambient, dark and cold atmospheres with a touch of haunted field recordings. Recommended for the fans of psychological thriller, horror and mystery literature.

As a whole, Tower Of Silence presents the listener with shuffling distortions, ominous clangs and discordant tones that meld together into something both atmospheric and claustrophobic at the same time. A track that demonstrates this perfectly is The Omen (A Schizomanic Trip), a track that is also my favourite on the album. A juddering rhythm opens things, fleshy drippings and gluggings quick on its heels. Distorted electronic shrills buzz and whine in the air. Then came my favourite element, the sound of what could be a breathless shuffling creature, and this in turn, is soon married to a kind of police-siren shrilling. There are background whispers, and later what could be a roar. With the title of the track already channelling thoughts of the film with the same name, this track seemed to signify the coming of the dark one, or a dark one at least, and its miasma of busy rustlings and rattlings was a joy to listen to.

The next track, Dagon (MMXX), is also another favourite of mine, and it contrasts with The Omen (A Schizomanic Trip), in a number of ways. It opens with the sound of crashing water and the roar of a leviathan, setting this soundscape in the most watery of settings. The deep vibrating sound, when combined with a kind of metallic shimmer, makes this a quieter track in some ways, but one equally as engrossing. Later can be heard what might be a bell-like tolling, mixed with the signal sweeps of a radio scanner. It had me thinking of the classic Harryhausen films in which some god or other would rise from the sea to terrorise the mortals quaking on the shore. A fun, wet track to be sure.

The final track I wanted to talk about in-depth is Man & Deviance, because it created such a strong image for me. It opens with a scuttling/scraping sound, and a kind of pulsing that hints at pressure building in the aether. A fast-whispering begins, a resonance hanging in the air behind it. There are heavy footsteps and insidious clickings and rattlings. The latter part of the track seems to present vocalisations that could be someone calling for help or crying out in despair. The image this track created for me was of an angel being kept in captivity, probably in some twisted tower where the shadows seep and the shackles are rimmed with rusty nails. A darkly menacing track, infused with corruption.

Tower Of Silence is a wary shuffle along dark corridors, a shuffle in which the listener is feeling their way by sound, and fingertips against stone, wondering why the air is so hot and their brow is so moist. The tracks it contains all seem to usher something dark into the mind, and offer it a lullaby to entice it to stay. A great dark ambient album for anyone’s collection.

Click here to visit Tower Of Silence’s Bandcamp page, and check out the album preview mix below:

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Tower Of Silence

Album Artist: Xerxes The Dark

Released: 25 Jan 2019

Dark Music Review – Abysmal

Dark Music Review – Abysmal

Review Written By Casey Douglass

There is something about the sea. When we think about massive spaces, the sky above usually grabs all of the attention, yet we’ve hardly made a dent in the wonders of the ocean. The sea is a flowing medium that can suffocate and crush us, or even simply conceal things that want to end our existence, and that doesn’t necessarily have to be the Elder Gods. In Abysmal, Ugasanie & Xerxes the Dark have created a dark ambient dose of warm insidious terror, one that takes the listener by the air-hose and drags them into the murk.

Album Description: Ugasanie & Xerxes the Dark team up on this album exploring the darkest depths of the ocean. The walls creak as you find your balance in the swaying research ship. A week in this storm is enough to make any man’s stomach turn, but today you enter the depths of the ocean. You slap some pills into your food hole and climb to deck, the bathyscaphe stands ready. You're 10 hours deep into the ocean when the power goes out. What the hell is going on up there? The darkness outside is thick, snake-like shadows worm around the vessel. Your trembling hand pushes down on the radio transmitter button, it's dead. For lovers of deep drone and isolated soundscapes, you want to swim with the leviathan? This is your album.

(FYI: A bathyscaphe is a kind of deep sea submersible. It’s also the title of one of the tracks, so I just knew I’d have to Google it to find out what it was. I thought it might just be like a bath-based-catastrophy, maybe someone slipping on the soap as they try to get out. I’ve certainly learned my thing for the day).

The tracks on Abysmal make great use of field-recordings to achieve their effect, which is something that I nearly always enjoy. From the opening sea-bird cries of Ships That Do Not Return, to the creaking metal heard in Creatures Of The Depths, the recordings do a fantastic job of setting the scene. And that’s not even mentioning the wonderful sounds of water, be it the broiling sea or the delicate bubbles rising from the depths.

Actually, I will stay with Creatures Of The Depths for a bit longer, as it’s a track that I really clicked with. After a very deep-sounding opening, we hear a flurry of bubbles and the diving klaxon of a submersible. After even more bubbles, we are treated to a variety of metal creaks that we can follow as they move from ear to ear. If this track doesn’t conjure impressions of sinking into the watery abyss, nothing likely will. The titular creatures, when heard, seem to call and cry with an underwater kind of wolf-howl. That’s the best way I can describe it. Top stuff.

Another track that I particularly enjoyed was The Unseen Dead Ship. The title itself brought to mind ghostly images, and the soundscape contained within certainly seemed to go along with this notion. After some bubbling water, again a sound that flowed from ear to ear, we hear an airy drone with a slight rumbling. Creaking is heard, possibly wooden this time, possibly a mast. I got the impression of fog as higher tones came out to play, a shimmer that hinted at the ghostly manifestation suggested by the track title. Another fun track.

Finally, and the final track of the album, The Sailor’s Song. This features yet more of the delicious field-recordings, setting the briny scene, but ends with a sailor’s voice. His words end with a cough and the sounds of drowning, which was a lovely surprise and something that I didn’t see coming. Dark eh? I loved it, and can’t think of a more interesting way to end an album.

Abysmal is a dark ambient album that features a watery mixture of gentle deepness and active darkness. Pressure builds as the soundscapes deepen, the sounds distorted by the fathoms, pulling the listener down and along for the ride. If your mind is tired of soaring among the heavens, or roaming strange dimensions, why not let it be dragged into the abyss for awhile, and see what comes and gives it a nibble.

Check out the Abysmal page on Bandcamp here for more information, and be sure to check out Creatures of the Depths below:

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

Album Title: Abysmal

Artists: Ugasanie & Xerxes the Dark

Label: Cryo Chamber

Released: Jul 10, 2018