Dark Ambient Review: Cenozoic

Review By Casey Douglass

The Cenozoic is the current era in which we find ourselves, a period that stretches back sixty six million years. That’s a mind boggling period of time, so Cenozoic is also a great name for a dark ambient album that’s themed around some of the giant mega-creatures that wandered the planet during that period.

Paleowolf’s Cenozoic is described as a collection of tracks that convey a symbolic representation of the force and energy that these creatures embodied, and is also said to be the spiritual successor to Megafauna Rituals, another album themed around the teeth, hooves and thunderous calls of prehistoric life.

Cenozoic makes great use of a variety of human vocals in creating its soundscapes. There are various grunts, huffs and chants, and these are accompanied by atmosphere shaking ritual drum-beats and rattlings. Field recordings are used to great effect too, letting the listener reflect on the wind rustling leaves, and strange knocking impacts that echo back from weathered cave walls and tree trunks.

One of my favourite tracks is Megatherium (a kind of Giant Sloth). It begins with static-like sound and a looming drone. Distant impacts echo through what feel like trees, a shrill pipe note piercing the soundscape, a lower note poking at the atmosphere. There are bird-calls, a slow, thumping beat, a sense of the wind, and wooden knockings and rocky scrapings that feel nearer over time. This soundscape felt like a gentle space, but also a threatening one, one in which a gentle creature is trying to survive, but dangerous predators are only over in the next clearing. I liked this feeling.

Mastodon is another favourite track. This one opens with a fast rumbling drum-beat and an elephantine trumpeting call. A vibrating tone rises and falls, creating a sensation of something unstoppable on the move. A swaying rushing sound soon begins, maybe hinting at fur rippling and rubbing on massive flanks. The beat stops near the midpoint and the space becomes airy before the sounds seep back into a chant-laced second half.

Finally, I really enjoyed the last track of the album: Argentavis (giant bird). I think this track stood out to me because it was a pleasing departure, or change of pace, from the land-based creatures of the previous tracks. This track features the howling wind of altitude, and high quivering pipe tones that sit amongst a low throbbing vibration. A bird-call sounds, and things feel easy and calm. A bird-screech echoes from the hard places, a brief drum-beat sounds, and leads to an airy, agitated second half of the track, like the air is full of busy insects and life trying to survive.

The album also includes a digital artbook featuring the artwork of Andjelko Kuzmanovic.

Cenozoic is an earthy and yet dreamy visit to a distant time. The field-recorded sounds, chanting and meaty drum-beats often give way to airy, swirling periods of dream-like impressions, beautifully hinting at the shamanic elements of the creatures and the journey to see them. These dreamy periods cleanse the mind of its familiarity with a soundscape, and then let the sounds emerge again, in a kind of second chance to be appreciated. It’s funny how a rhythmic drum-beat that you’re lulled by, suddenly stopping, can be just as interesting as the beat itself. On a personal level, I do slightly prefer Megafauna Rituals over Cenozoic, but this is more to do with the animals featured. They are both very fine albums though.

Visit the Cenozoic page on Bandcamp for more information. You can also check out the track Megatherium below:

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Cenozoic

Album Artist: Paleowolf

Label: Prometheus Studio

Released: 26 July 2021

Dark Ambient Review: Megafauna Rituals

Review by Casey Douglass

Before I discovered the dark ambient genre, I listened to some New Agey stuff. The only kind of New Age music that I was actually able to glean some enjoyment from tended to be shamanic. The rest left me feeling a bit nauseous if I’m honest. The non-shamanic variety often contained a mixture of panpipes and saccharine notes that not only bored me, but made me a little angry for some reason. Anyway, moving on. A short while ago, I purchased three of Paleowolf’s dark ambient albums, albums themed around prehistoric times and primal feelings. Here, I’m reviewing the one that I’d say is my favourite: Megafauna Rituals.

When I was previewing Megafauna Rituals on Bandcamp, I was impressed with the meaty, earthy feel to the tracks. Everything has such a massive heft and presence, and there is certainly nothing fluffy or saccharine about these soundscapes. The tracks are themed around various kinds of megafauna, those massive beasts that populated the earth during the Ice Age. Each track is the embodiment of the animal it gains its title from, and all of the tracks are fat with tribal drums and various kinds of drones and chanting.

One of my favourite tracks is Direwolf. It opens with a rising drone that’s met with a kinetic drumbeat and another, deeper drone. It isn’t long before the tribal vocal “huffs” begin, the soundscape blurring at the edges, like a massive rush of fuzzing wind. A low growling or snarling can be heard, and you just wonder when the first wolf howl will come. The chanted drone has a hard edge, feeling like it’s shredding the air. It’s not long after this that the first wolf howl sounds, the soundscape echoing this back in various ways, even when the howl hasn’t been heard for awhile. I enjoyed the fast drum-beat of this track, and the way that the soundscape seemed to quiver with energy at so many times. I would have kind of liked a more meaty wolf howl, but that’s only because the other sounds felt so strong and powerful. A fantastic track.

Direwolf had a faster drum-beat in comparison to most of the other tracks on the album (Sabretooh is also fast-paced). This is because Paleowolf does a great job of matching the speed or energy of the sounds to the animal involved. A wolf is far fleeter on its paws than a cave bear, for example, and the track, Cave Bear, is another of my favourites. It opens with a low, gritty, echoing drone, one that does conjure up feelings of being in a cave. A massive, muffled impact whumps and the rushing sound of breath flowing in and out of a big chest can be heard. A lumbering drumbeat begins with a hollow tone faint in the distance. An “ahh-like” chant sounds, and then fades into a hissing space. The deep grunts and chuffs of the bear are all suitably powerful and scary, and you get a great feeling of what this animal might have been like to be close to.

Totem is a track that focusses more on the humans in the Ice Age landscape, the shamans and the spirituality around these great beasts. Totem opens with some lovely, echoing tribal singing, the undertones flowing off into the shadows. The echoes seem slower than the chant, reflecting back in a very cool way. A massive drumbeat sounds at a slow interval and a drone grows. Later, we hear animal sounds, grunting and snuffling. Flurries of faster drum-beats fall. The rumbling of thunder and a howling wind can be heard a short time later. The second half of the track is a darker, deeper, rumbling affair, multiple chants and rushing sounds melding with dark drum-beats and worshipful drones.

While I appreciated the tracks that focussed on the more predatory animals, the kind that you wouldn’t want to be chased by if you were out for a walk in the woods, Megaloceros (a variety of deer) is a track that, for me, depicted a different kind of majesty. It opens with a kind of tropical birdsong and a gentle shimmer. There is a slow drum-beat and the sound of the megaloceros grunting or calling. The beat picks up and a horn note sounds, with lighter tones and a windy, exhalation kind of feeling. I felt there was a kind of sadness to this track, the melodies, when they appear, mournful that such a creature is no longer wandering the land. It’s a peaceful track, more gentle than the others, but just as graceful and powerful.

Megafauna Rituals takes the listener back to a time where life was so much harder and briefer, but also far simpler. Survival was linked to food, warmth and safety, rather than the continual mental masturbation inherent in modern society. Our ancestors knew how to survive, otherwise we wouldn’t be here to moan about so much. I wonder what they’d make of us now? I really enjoyed the time I spent taking an audio trip back to a different time. I’d like to think that the more ancient, survival orientated parts of my brain, heard something to set them churning too.

Visit the Megafauna Rituals page on Bandcamp for more information. You can also listen to Direwolf below:

Album Title: Megafauna Rituals

Album Artist: Paleowolf

Label: Prometheus Studio

Released: 23 Aug 2017

Dark Ambient Review: Beringia

Dark Ambient Review: Beringia

Review by Casey Douglass

I’m often up for music that takes me on a bit of a journey. Whether explicitly with characters actually delivering dialogue, or more subtly, it’s a nice feeling to open your eyes again and feel you’ve gone from “there” to “here” in the hour or so you’ve been listening. Creation VI’s Beringia is a dark ambient album that falls into the latter category, a shamanic-styled journey of drones, rattles and drumbeats, that lull the mind and lead it into potent spaces.

The soundscapes on Beringia are textured and often rhythmic, with piping and clacking going hand in hand with anything from field-recordings of water to the twang of a jaw harp. That’s not even mentioning the drones and didgeridoo. The tracks carry themselves along in their own rhythm, the main drone or beat gaining flourishes or extra detail sounds around it but largely following a rhythmic, trance-like predictability.

I think my favourite track is Haunted Shore, a soundscape that really brought to mind a dripping, misty shore, with the sound of muted things knocking in the distance and a strange little repeating tone that seemed to hint at the unease of the location. It also features a sound that I liken to “insect gloop” and the kind of rain that sounds like it is hitting a plastic bag. A drone rises at the midpoint that lends the whole thing an added feeling of menace or threat, a bassy beat fleshing out the edges.

I did really enjoy the final track, Conversation of Elements too, another track that opens with the sound of water, but languidly builds up to feed the listener gusts of wind and later, the crackle of fire. There are rattling wooden wind chimes, exhalations and sounds of snuffly activity, that might just hint at being underground at one point. I guess that’s all of the usual elements covered, earth, wind, fire, air and water. If you include spirit in the mix, that would be the people making the journey, in my humble opinion. Or the listener, if you want to get a bit meta about it.

In Beringia, Creation VI has made another fine album, one that uses rhythm and shamanic/tribal sounds to create a space that is a refuge from the mundane world. Gone are the annoying chimes of social media notifications and outrage-fueled news. They get smothered and muffled by the warming drones, energised drum rhythms and insect-like buzzes that remind the listener of the more primal parts of the human psyche.

Visit the Beringia page on Bandcamp, and check out the track Haunted Shore below:

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Beringia

Album Artist: Creation VI

Label: Cryo Chamber

Released: September 17, 2019

Dark Music Review – Deus Sive Natura

Dark Music Review – Deus Sive Natura

Review Written By Casey Douglass

Drone veteran Creation VI (Russia) presents us with his debut album on Cryo Chamber.

The cold wind howls outside the warm yurt, the shaman inside prepares the pipe. The inhale is deep. With the exhale he starts throat singing. The smoke dances between drums and bells raised by the rest of the tribe. Sweaty face sway and glazed eyes blink in rhythm with the beat.

This album is a journey of us humans moving through the ages in our universe. Trying to figure out our place within it as we forge myths and philosophies. Build megaliths and temples. Send our prayers into space and bide our time waiting for the miracle.

Recorded on old tapes for a fuzzy warmth. This album uses a lot of acoustic instruments like blockflute, chinese flute (hulusi), shruti-box, harmonica, ocarina, kazoo, bells, chimes, seeds & seedpods. Tribal drums make you feel like you are in the middle of a hypnotic ritual. Recommended for you who enjoy Ugasanie and Paleowolf and field recordings.

I first encountered Creation VI’s work when I reviewed his Myth about Flat World album last year. It was one of the most peaceful dark ambient albums that I had listened to, and it regularly lulled me to sleep (in a good way, that wasn’t a way of saying it was dull, far from it). When I saw Deus Sive Natura (god or nature) appear on Cryo Chamber, I was extremely interested in hearing what he’d created this time. What I found was an album that made use of the kind of shamanic beat and chants that helped me remember how I first began looking for darker, grittier music.

I used to buy CDs from New World Music, and yes, it really is as new agey as it sounds. This was long before I even had Internet access, so dark ambient was totally unknown to me at this point. I purchased Phil Thornton’s Shaman album though, and was blown away to hear something that wasn’t all pan-pipes (I am now violently allergic to pan pipes) and angel music. This was animal and dark and hypnotic, in the way any good shamanic album, in my opinion, should be. Well, after listening to Deus Sive Natura, I now remember why I love this kind of album. That isn’t to say that Deus Sive Natura is new agey, I was just roaming down memory lane, kicking a few stones as I wandered. Oh, and I’ve tried to find out what some of the track names mean via trusty old Google; I’ve used brackets after the titles to indicate what I found.

Ancestral Voice is the opening track of Deus Sive Natura, and features a soundscape that I really fell in love with. The sound of seed pods, a rhythmic chant and an infectious drum beat really creates a space that is trance inducing. I’ve been known to trance journey, and I could feel myself being lulled and pulled by this track. The rhythm feels just perfect and I found it hard to keep my head still as I listened, the pressure building to rock gently forward and back. Ancestral Voice also features some field-recordings: bird chirps, twigs and leaves crackling beneath the feet, and a few floating voices, the titular ancestors maybe. I particularly liked the moment when I realised that the bird chirping had become its own rhythmic beat, and that I couldn’t really recall when it had happened. As I listened, I was a little concerned that I might have found my favourite track straight away. That did turn out to be the case, but there were others that I very much enjoyed too.

Deus Otiosus (“idle god”) follows Ancestral Voice, a track that I felt began with the audio equivalent of a white fog. If the journeying shaman of the first track is now between worlds, Deus Otiosus very much put me in mind of some of kind of shadowy spirit realm. There is a lovely detail sound of what sounded like ankle-bells, setting up the impression of someone steadily walking through the low visibility landscape, the bells themselves maybe employed to scare away evil spirits. I felt that the fog turned pretty black as the track continued, maybe the mind of the shaman shedding its attachment to form as he/she goes deeper.

Deeper in, Cycles of Life is the next soundscape that develops around the listener's ears. A sustained “Ahh” chant-like sound gets us going, a rumbling drum beat its accompaniment. The chants turn more animal-like as the track progresses, the drums becoming a little subdued, field-recordings of snapping undergrowth emerging again. The mental images conjured by this track were of being stalked, maybe even death stalking life. The drum later takes on the aspect of a slow heart beat, chants and a buzzing noise arising as time progresses. The final image this track left me with was of a cracked light bulb with all kinds of flying insects flying towards it, the falling bodies of their incinerated companions adding yet more light to the scene, even as the death toll rises.

Divine Intervention follows Cycles of Life, a track that features what I’d call a shimmering drone-chant interplay that builds into a subtle prolonged “fanfare” , the kind of accompaniment that you might watch solar flares slowly erupting from the surface of the sun to. At around the four minute mark, I thought I heard other vocals in the pleasing wall of sound but that could have just been the way a mind hunts for things. They might have been there, they might not. It was nice none the less. The soundscape does change as the track continues, female singing/chanting adding a lovely dose of flavour and sound to the various rattling, buzzing and wind instrument notes.

The final track is Natura Renovatur (nature renewed, I think), an epic 23 minute finale that revisits a good number of the sounds and styles of the other tracks. Beginning with the gentle sound of wind, a drone soon grows from nothingness, airy movements and subtle chants hanging in the space around the other field-recordings that make an appearance, from bird chirps, to a kind of whimsical squeaking sound. At one point the dominant sound becomes a kind of siren, a kind of blaring sound although that word is too harsh to describe what is a pleasing effect. Natura Renovatur also contains a rhythmic drumbeat that adopts a number of different beats. A satisfying track to listen to.

There we have it. Deus Sive Natura is a stunning shamanic dark ambient album, the swaying drum beats and natural sounds mingling and hooking into the primal depths of the psyche, dragging that little wisp of essence that we believe to be “us” into another plane of existence.

Visit the Deus Sive Natura page on Bandcamp here for more information, and be sure to check out Ancestral Voice below.

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

Album Title: Deus Sive Natura

Artist: Creation VI

Label: Cryo Chamber

Released: June 13, 2017

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