Dark Ambient Review: Moth Star

Review By Casey Douglass

Moth Star is a dark ambient album from Altarmang, a music project created by Kenneth Hansson and Pär Boström. The album is described as an exploration of the patterns formed by the planets and the stars above, with a title that possibly hints at a lone, malevolent star that draws the curious under its influence, like moths to a candle flame.

Opening track Saiph gives a telling introduction to how the album will sound. It begins with an undulating drone and unnerving echoing pulses. A light tone floats and caresses as the deeper layers rumble and swell with ominous sounds. It feels dream-like and desolate, yet also incredibly old. It made me think of a pitch-black landscape with a lone crumbling building, and a moon-light so faint that all it does is give the merest of outlines to the structure. Creepy but fun to “walk” around.

My favourite track is Saturnine. It starts with a low drone and a hollow tube-like buzzing. The soundscape has a chant-like quality and features a relaxed pulsing and throbbing sensation. There are screechy, fuzzy sounds, distortion and blaring tones. There is the sound of metal impacting and sliding, and an agitating static that stirs the mixture. For me, this track felt like listening to some kind of infernal workshop, one that is deep underground and is the hot crucible in which death-dealing machines are birthed.

The final track Moth Star is a fitting end to the album. It feels like a windy, watchful soundscape, one in which the relaxed smooth tone seems to stoke the wind’s waxing and waning. This is a fuzzy, reverb-graced, gritty track, one with a hint of the void and of great forces at work. It’s also a track that feels like the audio equivalent of a giant being blowing all of the dust from a dead planet’s surface while a strange star looks on in glee.

Moth Star is a dark dream in audio form, a dream of the abyss, a dream of unknown influences that have unknowable aims. The soundscapes manage to hook into that Lovecraftian feeling that I really enjoy, that of cosmic horror and of how the human race should cower in the face of forces that could easily obliterate us and think nothing of it. Moth Star feels vast, deep and very dark. If you like your dark ambient to chill your soul in a soothing, almost relaxed fashion, you should check out Moth Star.

Visit the Moth Star page on Bandcamp for more information.

I reviewed this album by streaming from the Bandcamp page.

Album Title: Moth Star

Album Artist: Altarmang

Released: 21 December 2020

Dark Ambient Review: Aerography, Vol.I

Review By Casey Douglass

Mars is an enigmatic planet, one that looms large in the mind of anyone thinking about how humanity can become an interplanetary species. For a seemingly barren planet, it isn’t half beautiful to look at, knowing how remote it is from us. Aerography, Vol. I is a dark ambient album from composer Rodolfo Pitti, an album themed around Mars and a doomed astronaut mission to its surface. Some of the sounds that are used to achieve this are swirling tones, pulsing bass and electronic soundscapes that seem infused with the triumphant impression of “We are here!” even if things are going very badly for the fictional astronauts.

My favourite track is The Uninhabitable Caves of Mars. It begins with a low drone, one that is soon joined by a kind of rising and falling “spaceship flying over” sound. It feels like a cascade of pressure, with low hisses and barks possibly being the sound of ghost’s voices; maybe the beings who first lived on Mars millions of years ago. High gentle beeps emerge from the swirl, echoing rushing sounds feeling like there is movement where nothing can be seen. A dark, creeping sci-fi track.

Valles Marineris Reconnaissance Drone is another track that I enjoyed, as it is another track that had its own kind of darkness. This track opens with a rising and ominous bass melody, one that almost blares like a sinister horn. It feels like it edges into the kind of heavy you might hear in a heavy metal track; snarling electric guitar and fuzz. There is a roughness to the other tones, and flurries of sound at the edges. I got the mental image of a drone skimming the Martian landscape, each swell of the soundscape revealing the next valley or dried up ocean. The track feels a little lighter after the midpoint, but on the whole, another dark track.

Finally, Our Hearts Yearn For Something Mars Can't Supply is a track that appealed to me for different reasons. Whereas the previously mentioned tracks were dark, this one felt light, but in a strange way. After a delicate start, the soundscape feels like it spins up into a shimmering space of dancing high tones and airy “fluttering”. This combination gave me the mental image of a ball of golden light with strange mechanical red moths flitting around its surface. It felt like something flying in sunlight to me at the least. A sad track, but also a nice one.

Aerography, Vol. I is an album that creates the feeling of vast vistas on an unforgiving planet. There is a sci-fi aesthetic that underpins everything, and as I said in the first paragraph, a kind of triumphant, even celebratory feeling that seems to emerge in each track. I like this mixture of triumph and doom. It feels like the audio equivalent of someone trying really hard to teleport somewhere using only the power of their mind, achieving it, being ecstatic, and then realising that they are falling from the sky a split second later.

Visit the Aerography, Vol. I page on Bandcamp for more information.

Album Title: Aerography, Vol. I

Album Artist: Rodolfo Pitti

Released: 10 July 2021

Dark Ambient Review: S.S. Moreau

Review by Casey Douglass

I’ve never read the book, or seen the films inspired by H.G Wells’ The Island of Dr Moreau, but I guess that the fact I know the general gist of it speaks to its pervasiveness in parts of our culture. While I remember watching a Simpsons’ Halloween special that tipped its hat to the tale, I’m not aware of having heard any music that was inspired by its species-meddling. That is, until now, as S.S Moreau is a dark ambient album from Scott Lawlor and Mombi Yuleman, one that takes the sinister idea of Dr Moreau and runs with it... all the way into space!

I quite like coming across stories or ideas that uproot something from its familiar setting, and that plants it somewhere quite different. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but others, it can take something that you previously felt quite indifferent to, and give it enough of a twist to make you realise that you really enjoy it in this form. The concept of S.S Moreau is that of a stranded spaceship crew who are rescued by the sinister doctor when his space station, the S.S Moreau, detects their distress beacon. Once “rescued”, and after a period of uneasy discovery, the crew eventually find themselves fleeing from his strange alien-hybrid creatures as they threaten to overrun the station.

I thought that the first track, The Biological Station, set this up beautifully. It opens with an eerie whistling drone, a little like what you might hear in the first Alien film’s score. A light beeping and a whirring tone looms, and what began as restful, grows into a more ominous soundscape. It starts to feel a bit swarm-like, and as if something big is coming. It is the audio equivalent of being on the verge of starvation and coming across a maggot ridden cow carcass. Salvation and doom all in one. A little later, the sounds and tones gave me the feeling of the stranded ship being swallowed up by the larger S.S Moreau, the creaking metal and cavernous feelings giving the impression that the larger ship actually licked its lips. Then you hear the organic, guttural sounds of strange creatures.

The tracks that follow feature a nice range of creature sounds. Some sound bird-like or monkey-like, others more alien. He Knows Something Of Science feels damn right tropical, with clicking trickling water, insect-like rattling and the hoots and chirps of who knows what. Monsters Manufactured is a different beast, one that feels more lab-like, more meddling. It opens with a deep male chant, a female one joins, and a third that warps up and seems alien... something other. An ominous beat and a tinny beeping rhythm create an enjoyable feeling of “wrongness”. It lightens a little later, with a female vocal and light, breezy tones, but the background sounds still hint at dark things. I thought that I heard faltering footsteps on metal floors at one point, and at another, a kind of trundling rising discord, like a mass breakout of warrior insects.

How The Beast Folk Tasted Blood is a clinking, smooth space, the slow beat soon joined by faster tempos. It felt a little tribal, a little “cannibal”, a little “exotic”. I liked the last third or so the most though, when things seem to darken, a sound like sea waves breaking on a beach of bones and a vibrating tone hinting at a line crossed that can’t be undone. The final track, No Desire To Return To Mankind, seems to give the protagonist a dark dose of grim determination. Its plastic-carrier-bag-rustling and throbbing bass tones giving it a “film end-credit” type feeling, one where the ending was far from happy and the scars and trauma will last in the survivor/s for the rest of their life. I particularly enjoyed the radio-chatter and the strange squawks and sounds that seep into things.

S.S Moreau is a dark ambient space treat for people who like their darkness with a sci-fi twist. Some of the sounds it contains seem close to their earthly counterparts, others seem warped and manipulated, which is a pleasing parallel between how tones are created for dark ambient albums, and the subject matter of hybrid-creation. If I was drifting in space and the S.S. Moreau offered rescue, I’d be game for that, even knowing how things would turn out. It sure beats starving to death or turning into an icicle as depressurization occurs.

Visit the S.S.Moreau page on Bandcamp for more information. You can also check out the track Monsters Manufactured below:

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: S.S. Moreau

Album Artist: Scott Lawlor & Mombi Yuleman

Released: 8 Jan 2021

Citizen Science, Anxiety and Mars

Citizen Science, Anxiety and Mars

By Casey Douglass

I was browsing YouTube... well, browsing is too active a word for it really. I was looking at stuff the YouTube algorithm decided to sling my way... and I came across a video by Anton Petrov about a mysterious dimming star. As part of this video, Anton talks about citizen science, a way for non-expert people to take part in the analysis of data that is just too vast to tackle in the usual way. A site he mentioned, Zooniverse.org, looked quite enticing, and I really liked the idea of spending a bit of time now and then, helping out with some of the more space orientated projects.

That all sounds quite good, I thought. I didn’t realise however, that it would feed into my anxiety issues, and almost lead me to quit in the attempt. Not due to anything wrong with Zooniverse or how things are presented; the issues I encountered were the usual old ‘Casey’ issues. I didn’t quit though, and I’m now in a more comfortable place with it. I thought that I would write this post as a way to reinforce what I’d learned (or reminded myself of) and that maybe, someone, somewhere, might also find that interesting or be helped by it.

Once I was signed up on Zooniverse (a very quick process), I was able to browse the various projects that were looking for help. Whether I was just over-tired or just not bright enough, I was taken aback by the complexity of some of the tasks. I had a hard time choosing which one I wanted to try. I eventually settled on a project called Cosmic, an endeavour that has volunteers labelling images from Mars.

Cosmic stands for Content-based Object Summarization to Monitor Infrequent Change. Space exploration is limited by data bandwidth between the Earth and whichever equipment is being remotely controlled. Usually the camera-laden robot sends the data direct to Earth and only gathers as much data as can actually be sent. Scientists look at the results and decide where to point it next. This leads to downtime for a robot that could be put to much more use. It also isn’t conducive to the robot reacting to real-time events, such was the weather, as they happen in its environment.

The Cosmic project aims to use machine learning to train a system that will help in the development of future Mars orbital spacecraft, ones that can continuously gather and analyse data themselves, sending the most interesting stuff home first. The project on Zooniverse is designed to help with the development of this software, and it entails the volunteers inventorying pictures of various types of surface activity on Mars. At the moment, these surface features fall into a number of categories: Araneiforms (spider-like features), Trough networks, Linear features and ‘Other’. These are further split into ones with ‘deposits’ or not, and a description of the image background brightness.

I read through the background material, the tutorial, and the Field Guide that you can draw on for more help, and I unexpectedly found myself stressing and picking at things. I think I instantly put a lot of pressure on myself to make the right decision on each image, even though the FAQ explicitly states that each one will be labelled by many people, and that they would be reviewed once again before use. This should mean that multiple people would have to make the same mistake and even then, an expert would likely pick up on it before conclusions are drawn. You’d think that would have made an impression on my mind when I first read it, but I think I was already feeling a bit overwhelmed.

Overwhelm is a pain in the backside for a tired, anxious mind (yes, minds have backsides in this post, get over it). So is being overly perfectionistic, intolerant of uncertainty and having the general urge to avoid mistakes, to be a ‘good’ person, and to not let anyone down. If you wanted to mix a head-fuck cocktail, those are some pretty potent ingredients. I was tired, I ‘tipped in’ the Field Guide sections about araneiforms, light and dark deposits, troughs and all the other stuff, and gave it a good ol’ shake. There wasn’t much room for the small mental voice that tried to get me to chill-out. I didn’t even hear it when it said “You’ve only just read all of this stuff and you expect to digest it instantly? Relax!’

I started to look at other projects, ones looking for local group clusters, gravity ripples and other kinds of research. All had their own levels of intricacy and overwhelm, and none seemed to be something that jumped out at me as ‘easier’ to get into. So I persisted with Mars. Good old Mars.

My next session of trying to give a label to photos went a little better but still ended with an exclamation of ‘Fuck it!’ and a switching of browser tab to see what was happening on Twitter. Sometimes it’s just a bad time to attempt certain things. It wasn’t until my next attempt (these attempts were on different days) that I felt more at ease. I still had the mental chatter rabbiting away about making a mistake, not being good enough, bright enough, whatever enough, but I was able to label some interesting Mars features with a little more confidence, and to also not feel too inadequate for clicking the ‘Unsure’ button a number of times.

As with most things that cause anxiety, exposing to it in small doses can gradually coax the mind into not overreacting to it, to ease off on squirting adrenaline into the body, to generally acclimatize to the discomfort you feel. I know this. I know it back to front and side to side. It still catches me out in periods where I’m extra tired, stressed, or even in times of being overly happy. Emotions are tricksy things, setting off all kinds of associations and reactions and memories. I usually pick up on it before it forces me away from something, but this time I was kept asleep at the keyboard.

Maybe if I’d been doing something more selfish I would have avoided the ‘do goody’ imperative, but I dare say I’d have just felt guilty for pissing away my time on something less worthwhile. Whatever happened, I came through it though, and that’s the main thing. I wouldn’t say I look forward to looking at pictures of Mars's surface features again, but I don’t dread it now. In time I hope to gain a little sense of achievement and of helping with something that just seems so cool to me, but for now, not wanting to pack it in is a sign of things moving in the right direction. I also hope that I’ll remember this post when I trip up again (and I will trip up again).

Thanks for reading. If you didn’t already, visit Zooniverse.org for more information about citizen science, and also visit Anton on YouTube, he makes some great space videos and is clearly passionate about the wonders of the universe.

Dark Music Review – The Infinity Coordinates

Dark Music Review – The Infinity Coordinates

Review Written By Casey Douglass

Pavel Malyshkin ( Ugasanie ) presents us with his dark space project Silent Universe. Explore the anomalies that lurk in the infinite dark. Listen to magnetic readings of dark space as you probe the unexplored. This album brings dark rumbling sounds in the raw isolated style that is Pavel's expertise. Recommended for fans of space ambient.

There’s something seductive about the harsh, empty vastness of space. One of my favourite meditative practices is to imagine myself resting on some kind of spacecraft as it journeys from one galaxy to the next, the light of a million stars glinting on its hull. When a dark ambient album comes along that fits that theme, I take to my bed and indulge those images with eyes closed and blanket warm. The Infinity Coordinates is the latest that has accompanied me, and it did its job wonderfully.

The soundscapes created are smooth and expansive, the tempo fitting the shape of a universe in no hurry to provide entertainment for a puny human on an intergalactic jaunt. That being said, there are quirks and interesting events that you almost feel lucky to have witnessed, rather than them being orchestrated just for you. One example is opening track Spiral Space, a composition that creates a soundscape of flaring sounds; a shimmering environment in which you wouldn't be surprised to meet your own self coming towards you from the other direction. Things seem to move on later in the track, giving the listener the feeling of being left behind, much like seeing a jump-ship speed away from the vantage point of a desolate moon.

The idea of desolation brings me onto another track that I wanted to mention by name: Emptiness of Other Worlds. The deep drone and what appear to be robotic sobs meld with the other sounds to create the impression of a space traveller finding a deserted city on some backwater planet, but one that is millions of years unoccupied. The music gave me the impression of harsh shadows picking out the remains of architecture as the nearby star casts its rays over the lifeless dust. A melancholy soundscape but one well worth spending time inside.

Pulsar is another great track, one that builds into an electromagnetic soundscape that tunes the listener into the sounds of a pulsar. Other elements in this track create a pulsing momentum, and I half got the impression of the beam of the star, when it came my way, resembling a giant eye staring at me. And no, I’ve not just watched too much Lord of the Rings.

The Infinity Coordinates is a very fine album, one that leads the listener through a space that, at times, seems impartial, and at others, seems to be half aware of being visited, even if millions of years too late. If you enjoy the setting of space, The Infinity Coordinates is an album to pick up when you can.

Visit the The Infinity Coordinates page on Bandcamp here for more information, and be sure to check out Pulsar below:

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

Album Title: The Infinity Coordinates

Artists: Silent Universe

Label: Cryo Chamber

Released: Dec 26, 2017

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Dark Fiction - Burrow

Burrow

By Casey Douglass

International Space Station Log Entry #82256 : 27-12-17:

This is Commander Mills, one year into what should have been a six month stint on the I.S.S. I am writing this so that there is some record of what has happened, in case there is no-one left to tell the tale. I will be ejecting the log cluster before the station’s orbit degrades enough to drag it down with us. Hopefully the cluster will stay in orbit indefinitely for future generations to find, if there are any that is. With this in mind, I will give a brief recap of events.

A nuclear power station in Asia went into meltdown eight months ago. As it was later discovered, this power station was particularly near a fault in the Earth’s crust. Once the radiation levels spiked sufficiently to penetrate this area, Burrowing Syndrome began to manifest in the human population nearby. This then gradually spread until it was global, a pandemic that brought about the downfall of humanity.

Someone afflicted with Burrowing Syndrome would, without a moment’s hesitation, drop to their knees and begin to claw at the ground. It didn’t matter what type of ground or surface, when it struck someone, they fell to their knees and began to dig. People in cities and towns fared the worst, scraping at the ground until finger nails broke, fingers cracked and flesh began to be grated away by the friction. Early victims were restrained for their own good, but as the outbreak hit critical mass, there was nothing that could be done. The souls who were lucky enough to find themselves on soil or soft ground would dig and dig until they burrowed out of site, reacting violently if anyone tried to drag them from their hole. It took only a few weeks for the world below to fall silent, leaving us adrift and staring open-mouthed at the blue planet in our view ports.

We watched on from up here waiting for fresh news, monitoring ourselves for the syndrome in case someone got it into their head to puncture the station in some misguided frenzy to get out. I am happy to report that all crew seemed to be unaffected by the condition, which was about the only good thing we held onto as we rationed ourselves and floated around in a state of zombie-like starvation. Marlow died just over a month ago, his body seeming to shut down due to malnutrition. I thought we were all going to slowly follow suit, until the quiet planet below started to broadcast again.

We were orbiting above the Himalayas when the weak signal reached us. It was fuzzy and racked with interference, but we were able to clean things up. It was them, the people who had burrowed. We weren’t sure whether to believe them or not but they were people, which was enough for us at the time. They explained that they had been drawn to an inner zone of the planet, some oasis of advanced technology, the biome from which humanity literally sprouted. They sent us co-ordinates and invited us to join them. They chose a landing spot that the station would pass over, the ground there soft and easy to push through. Yes, apparently when we are nearer the surface, we will be afflicted with B.S too. Ha! B.S! It sounds it doesn’t it. They told us to keep our spacesuits on as it would stop us suffocating in the ground, a fate that apparently claimed 95% of all those who did burrow into softer stuff. We tried to ask questions, such as what had caused all of this, but beyond confirmation that the nuclear meltdown triggered it, they would say little else. Apparently they were using the mountain range below as a giant antenna, and we would be leaving it’s range in mere minutes. It sounds incredibly fanciful but what else could we do but take the chance.

Here we are, out of options. The station is decaying as much as the crew. We took the decision to degrade its orbit, using the one capsule we have to try to achieve the landing area our ‘friends’ below have chosen. I’ve never been more scared in my life, but I’d rather die doing something than waste away floating in a tin can so close to home. The I.S.S just shuddered so I am guessing we are beginning to hit the atmosphere. I need to get this finished and ejected. If you read this, whoever you are, I hope history will show what happened to us, and if it all ends now, in this way, who’d have seen that coming!

Commander Mills. Crew Number #15-653

THE END

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Dark Game Review - Empyrion: Galactic Survival

I take a look at Eleon Game Studios' PC space-survival sim Empyrion - Galactic Survival over on Geek Syndicate.

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Dark Review - Habitat

My review of space survival game Habitat is now up on Geek Syndicate here. A pretty polished physics based building game that just needs to be a bit further into development before being something genuinely special.

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Dark Review - Faster Than Light (FTL)

My review of Faster Than Light is out now in this quarters newly released Geek Syndicate digital magazine. A great little space game that puts you in control of your own ship and crew in a brutal universe full of conflict. The new magazine can be downloaded or viewed online here.

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