Dark Fiction - The Carrion Maven

I have a short (very short) piece of fiction now up at Black Hare Press called The Carrion Maven. Click here to read it and here to visit the Dark Moments page where you can read others' work too.

Flash Fiction - Slow

Flash Fiction - Slow

By Casey Douglass

Spinkel had always been slow. Not slow in a dimwitted kind of way, but slow in both movement and speech. His friend Rami often joked that Spinkel lived life at half-speed. Spinkel felt this was an exaggeration, as he knew he would have to do his version of “running” to even approach “half-speed”.

The doctors were stumped as to whether his condition was mental or physical, or both. After years of tests, pumping him with caffeine, stimulants and courses of cognitive behavioural therapy, they did what any caring doctor would do. They washed their hands of him.

As far as Spinkel’s job prospects, they shouldn't have been zero, but they were. He’d achieved good grades at college and shown himself to be a friendly, sociable chap. Employers however, wouldn’t touch him. Job after job passed him by. The Job Centre tried to help. They had the bright idea of having Spinkel re-classified as a robot. It didn’t work. They penalized Spinkel for their own failings. He told them to go fuck themselves. Slowly, of course. With diagrams and everything.

On a darkening evening, Spinkel found himself on the roof of the local multi-story car park. He considered jumping. He idly wondered if he would fall at a slow, ponderous rate. It was as he ruminated on this that he spied a gathering in a back garden on the other side of the street. His heart hit a heady forty five beats per minute as his breath began to catch in his throat. He saw a group of people, and they were slow too!

As it turned out, they were full-speed people, but people behaving in a deliberately slow fashion. After his chat with the leader, he bought a book on Tai-Chi and other meditative movement-based disciplines. He wondered if he’d found his niche in the world. He studied hard and became a teacher, running his classes at the local town hall and amassing such a following that he soon had to expand his operation. He brought his innate slowness to the postures and movements he performed, something even the best ‘normal’ instructors could only dream of. 

Spinkel fell in love with a frazzled woman who’d worked herself into a nervous breakdown. Together, they found that his tempo and her over-drive blended perfectly into the bosom of their intimate relationship. They had two slow children, were adopted by a moderately-paced cat, and lived out their days in a quiet cottage, packing every second of every day with only as much as it could comfortably carry.

THE END

DARK AMBIENT: Mount Shrine Interview

Mount Shrine Interview

Interview by Casey Douglass

In recent months, I’ve been listening to Rio De Janeiro-based dark ambient artist Mount Shrine’s fantastic Ghosts on Broken Pavement, reveling in the moods it creates. During the last few weeks, I was lucky enough to have an email chat with Cesar, and I was able find out a bit more about what makes him tick.

Laced throughout this interview are photos taken by Cesar, of the view that he often stares at when creating his music.

CASEY: How did your interest in creating music first form, and what drew you towards the dark ambient genre?

CESAR: I actually don't really know. I've always been an avid music fan, even when I was a child. I was always listening to my family's old records, watching video clips on local TV channels (back when this was still a popular thing), stealing my mom's pans and "playing drums" with them until my neighbors would scream at me and silly things like that.

There were some records that truly stood out to me at the time, but nothing ambient related. When I was around 11-12, I started being interested in how people I listened to made music, by doing silly Google searches like "how to make music Aphex Twin" or something like that. It was just for pure curiosity on knowing their process. Then I got some freeware stuff and started playing with them, making noises and having fun. I believe I could say it was simply a natural progression for me then, I guess, since I was never serious about making music before I was 13-14 years old. Of course, the lack of having a musical family and the lack of supportive people around me would be a huge factor on that, since no one ever gave me an option of living a life by making any form of art.

I think the first ambient record I actually ever heard was probably any of Brian Eno's ambient albums (my best guess would be the first one), but the album that really got my attention towards the genre was Akira Yamaoka's score for Silent Hill 2. I know it might be a bit cliche to say this, but it really was! The first thing that caught my attention was how diverse his soundtrack work was: within the same game, you had musical cues that ranged from ambient, downtempo, industrial/noise to, even, tracks that resembled a bit of early 90s alternative rock. But when I really delved by listening it in the album format, I can't even put into words of what I felt. All the playful joy of making noises with plug-ins disappeared and I decided to dive more seriously into this thing. I've already spent more than 6-7 years listening to this soundtrack, but I still get shivers when I listen to The Day of Night or White Noiz.

Most of the stuff he did for Silent Hill were made with sample libraries, especially with the ones Spectrasonics released in late 90s, but his sample choices were just perfect because it fits completely with the whole scenario of each game. Some might try to diminish his work today as just "lazy", due to its extensive use of sample libraries, but I don't think like that. I don't think any other artist might have used the same samples in more evocative ways like he did. You know, there's SO many people who hear any slow chords playing beneath a song and think "Oh, it sounds like Silent Hill!" even if it's something from a drum and bass track, and that's mainly due to his perfect sample choices. If it was a different composer working with Team Silent, it would be something completely different and that's so interesting.

CASEY: Which other musicians would you say have influenced you in the music that you create?

CESAR: On the ambient side of things, I simply love Akira Yamaoka and Tim Hecker. They're basically my two favorite ambient artists and I could listen to them forever. If I had to choose my "desert island" album by each of them, they would be the soundtrack for Silent Hill 2 and Radio Amor, respectively. Of course, I have other favorites in the genre, like Tor Lundvall, Leyland Kirby, William Basinski, Stars of the Lid, Rod Modell and Burial, if you consider him as, mainly, an "ambient" artist. I'm also very fond of late 90s so-called "IDM", like Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Amon Tobin, Christoph de Babalon, Boards of Canada, and Autechre. I've recently came across this little nice Luke Slater album, The 4 Cornered Room and I've been listening to it a lot. Basic Channel and Echospace [Detroit] labels have their own place in my heart too and they're a big part of my "weekend chill" playlist.

Ambient unrelated, I must say I have a healthy obsession with two artists: John Frusciante and Jorge Ben (now going under the "Jorge Ben Jor" name). I just love everything they've made so far and I can't really go a week without listening to, at least, one song from them. I think you can pick some bits and pieces of them in some of my artistic stylishing. For example, I started getting addicted on minor 7th chords right after I got into Ben's work. I'm also addicted to early oldskool hardcore/jungle stuff. Back when I was producing Ghosts on Broken Pavement, I was mainly listening to mixtapes cassette rips of these styles on Youtube 24/7, which was the cataclysm of giving my last album its sound. If I had to point one out as a favorite, it would be Dieselboy's Witness The Strength mix. Simply, a masterpiece.

CASEY: What does your technical setup consist of, which software and equipment are mainstays of your craft?

CESAR: Ableton Live only, with mouse and keyboard. Live was the only DAW that I really felt connected with, when I was trying out demo versions of various DAWs to pick my main one years ago. I tried so much stuff and I hated them all, but I don't know why. If I hadn’t tried Ableton Live, I would probably have given up making music. At least, with a computer. With that said, Live has been my main "friend" for almost 8 years and I'm still learning new things in it! Apart from some third-party plugins, like Fabfilter (their EQ and Limiter are some of the best third-party plugins you could probably have) and some ValhallaDSP reverbs (the "VintageVerb" one is my favorite), I'm completely happy with Ableton's stock stuff.

If someone thinks that Ableton sounds "flat" or "dull", they should go listen to Fanu and notice that they've been probably using Ableton wrong. Honestly, 90% of the sounds from Ghosts on Broken Pavement are just simple sounds made with Analog or sub/reese basses made with Operator. Almost all post-processing, like reverb, delay or filtering, were all from Ableton's own stuff. The remaining 10% are mainly loops I took from recordings I did with PureData or small patches I did with granular samplers/synthesis, like Ableton's Granulator or The Mangle.

CASEY: You make great use of field-recordings in your tracks. I particularly like the various ways you utilize the sound of rain. Do you have a favourite “real world” sound to try to capture, and what do you make your field-recordings with?

CESAR: These sounds are all, basically, a collage of sounds I love making, just to keep playing on the background of any song I make. The sounds sources, well, you can find them anywhere: there's some stuff I got by blindly searching on the internet, looped atmospheres I got from my favorite movies, low-quality recordings from my phone, manipulated samples of vinyl and fire crackle and, by keeping them "glued" together, a quiet tape hiss. I like to create this whole "inside world" feel on my tracks.

My music is quite a reflection of my personality; I like to stay in the background, in my little world, without people trying to get my attention and to move like shadow through the streets. The sound collage also reflects my whole neighborhood too. People think that Rio is all about sunny days, beaches and jungles, but where I live all you'll be able see is urban decay, streets with broken pavement, trash everywhere and, as much it can get hot some days, it can get truly cold too. So I think that, by creating this sound collage, it doesn’t just give the nice texture I always wanted to give for my tracks, but it's also a way for giving the listener to glimpse what I observe in my neighborhood.

CASEY: When you aren’t creating music, what else do you enjoy doing creatively, or even just for the simple fun of things?

CESAR: That's tough, because I don't do much, hahaha! I usually keep a daily schedule to myself. When I wake up, I like to watch some stuff on Youtube while I'm sipping a bunch of coffee cups. It's mainly these horror channels, like Nexpo or ScareTheater, or random gaming and tutorial videos. For some years, I've been watching around 1-2 movies every night too as a routine. I'm not a huge cinephile guy, but I like to watch weird and different challenging stuff, just to keep my creative juices flowing. I've recently gone through Pedro Costa's filmography and I watched all his feature films in a week. Just plain darkness and a claustrophobic view on the everyday life of simple people.

CASEY: What are you currently working on now, and what are your plans for the future?

CESAR: Well, I'm actually not working on anything right now. After the release of Ghosts on Broken Pavement, I forced myself to get some months off, to clear my mind a bit and take care of my health. The last 6-7 months have been tough and I haven't stopped a single day since then. While I was on this "forced vacation" for myself, I started learning Japanese and decided to go back and play some of my favorite games again, especially Dark Souls and Playdead's stuff. Only recently, I started to do some silly stuff on Live, but nothing too concrete or making any real "tracks"; it's mainly mindless noodling with synths, recording samples and chopping breakbeats, just to get myself back at the creative mindset.

Future plans? Surely is to keep releasing new stuff. I haven't been too interested in the "album" format lately, because I feel that its format is much better when you need to close a "chapter" of what you're doing creatively, somehow, rather than just a compilation of tracks that sounds nicely together. I started having these thoughts around the early drafts of my last album. With that said, when the right time to release something new comes, it will come naturally and with a personal reason for doing so. It might be something new for Mount Shrine, or any new alias I might feel like giving a try in the future.

***

Thanks to Cesar for such a detailed and fascinating look into what drives his music, how he does it and what might be coming next. You can find Mount Shrine on Bandcamp and you can read my review of Ghosts on Broken Pavement by clicking the links.

Dark Ambient Review: A New Terror Born in Death

Dark Ambient Review: A New Terror Born in Death

Review by Casey Douglass

When it comes to dark ambient, sometimes, you might just be in the mood for something long and lingering, rather than a series of quickies. Yes, I’m talking about track length, what else did you think I could be talking about? Tracks of a longer duration sometimes help whichever mood is being created to emerge, giving it the space to blossom into a dark winged moth flittering around the lamp that is your mind. Noctilucant’s A New Terror Born in Death is an example of just such an album, as it consists of two half-hour tracks that make great use of the extra time they’ve been given.

Album Description: A New Terror Born in Death is the latest opus from the atmospheric dark ambient doom bearer, Noctilucant (Joseph Mlodik). Where Joe has been carving out a niche in the dark ambient community with his foreboding cinematic compositions for several years, he brings us a new near hour-long seamless drone piece. Segmented into two halves, A New Terror Born in Death lulls you into a morbid trance as it entrenches you amidst the decaying architecture of a pallid planet.

While this album does not carry forward the post-apocalyptic story Noctilucant has crafted in his releases Back to the Mud, Oblivion to You All, and Bleak and Drained of Colour, A New Terror Born in Death offers a wayward wandering across ashen-coated fields of grass and derelict asphalt architecture, pockmarked by still-life moments of blissful serenity.

Track one is A New Terror, a track that for me, brought to mind a crumbling city, one that has fallen to some kind of dark malady or presence. The track opens with wet crackles of water and a drone that is soon joined by lumping/creaking metal. Maybe this is the dock yard where the city’s problem started? An insect-like hum swarms in the ear, and a pulsing, like a rasping breath emerges. After a short while, the soundscape quietens and turns a little more contemplative. Whispers carry on the wind, a deeper drone comes and goes, and eventually, the sound of a bell tolling rings out across the rooftops. Other things that jumped out at me were a section of the track that seemed to hint at the kind of music you’d hear at a carnival. There was also a stretch where I heard something that could have been something leathery-winged and hungry, following people who might have been traipsing through the abandoned streets. A track with urban terror and dark brooding at its core.

The second track, Born in Death, presents a more subterranean environment, to me at least. Maybe a cave system below the city of the first track? The track opens in an airy, echoey space, with certain sounds possibly being distant cries. It’s a deep and meditative track, a whooshing stream and the shrill sounds of a strange menagerie sitting well with a chant-like sound. The track features a number of changes in feeling, from the wet onrush of boiling gloop near the 10 minute mark, to a metal-clanging-airy-cavernous feeling a short time later. This cavernous feeling is caused by a wind-like effect rising and rising while another sound falls and falls. It felt a little like an underground vortex fuelled by the deep air currents of the cave system. I also thought I could hear the distant carnival style music once more. For me, this track takes the listener through a deep cave system and deposits them on the open river at the docks of the city above.

A New Terror Born in Death is a dark ambient album that flows with energy and movement. Its use of drone often caused me to hear things that I wasn’t sure were really there, catching hints of female chants and other tones that might well have been my mind playing tricks on me, pattern finding in the maelstrom. Both tracks shift and evolve, light and dark, cloying and spacious, and they took me on an enjoyable mental journey around mental scenes that appealed to my darker nature. If you like this kind of dark ambient, you’d do well to visit A New Terror Born in Death on Bandcamp at this link. You can watch the teaser trailer for the album below too:

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: A New Terror Born in Death

Album Artist: Noctilucant

Label: From Corners Unknown Records

Released: Feb 28, 2019

Dark Book Review: Fangtastic Tales of Werewolf Savagery

Dark Book Review: Fangtastic Tales of Werewolf Savagery

Review by Casey Douglass

I’ve always been more of a werewolf fan than of those traditionally over-romanticised vampires. Give me the brute force, bestial power and probable risk of fleas over the daylight-shunning corpse-jockeys any day. That being said, I’ve not really read any decent werewolf fiction for a long, long time. Until I read Toneye Eyenot’s Fangtastic Tales of Werewolf Savagery that is, a collection of short stories and a novella, that all feature the hunt-fueled activities of lycan kind.

Book blurb: La Lluna Plena – the Full Moon – that beautiful and mysterious celestial body which stirs within us all those deep, dark emotions we do our best to subdue and control. For some of us, her influence runs deeper, much deeper. We all walk beneath her maddening rays, yet, while most may shrug off the notion that inside us all resides a beast – a savage wolf – there are those of us who embrace the monster within and ride that lunatic wave with abandon each time she casts her gaze upon us.

Some see it as a blessing, others…a curse. To be bitten, and fall prey to murderous urges beyond our control, or to have the good fortune to be born into the pack, or perhaps even to whisper words of spell in order to evoke the lycanthropic gift, there are more than a few ways to cast aside the human skin and let loose the wolf within. Those ways are explored throughout this collection of werewolf terrors.

Suspend disbelief, dear reader, because whether you care to admit it, or continue to live in ignorant bliss, we walk among you. We smell the blood as it courses through your veins and taste your fear on the breeze. We long to see the life drain from your quivering flesh as we gorge. Beware the Full Moon, as you are about to enter the world of the Werewolf.

Blood Moon Big Top is the title of the novella, and it’s the first tale you will come to as you delve into the book. It tells the tale of Marbles the clown, a loner who enjoys the thrill of being someone else when he is in full costume and performing for the circus punters. An unlucky crossing of paths with a feral youth soon gives him the chance to become someone else in a more literal sense, his body and mind changing into something more bestial and less easy to manage.

The story follows his adaptations, and the gore, when it comes, is quite sudden. After the initial baptism of blood, the reader can tag along with Marbles as he struggles with the slaughter, but he all too soon warms to the thrill of the hunt. There are lots of nice descriptions of the physiological changes he goes through, and the pacing of the tale soon builds to the feeling that, if he carries on in this way, his days are numbered.

Next up is Hunter’s Moon, a short story revolving around a werewolf pack and their preparations to celebrate the glorious Blood Moon. Naturally this entails a rough time for any humans unlucky enough to cross paths with them, and the exclamation of “Run!” could very much be a one word description of the general mood of this tale. A nice build-up and frenetic at its peak.

Dire is next, and is a snapshot of misery for an unfortunate criminal. A cat burglar gets more than he expected when he is paid to steal the massive fossilized paw-print of a dire wolf from a museum. It’s a classic tale of there being more than one kind of payment, and to beware the price of dealing with strange people...

Human Skin relates the experiences of Alex and Jason, a private investigator and his protégé, as they study the body of a dead woman, and attempt to get to the bottom of who, or what killed her. The “who or what” angle is quite the cause of disagreement between them, but in the end, they do get to the bottom of things, however inadvisable that turns out to be.

The final story is The Tomb of Legion, a tale in which vampires also make an appearance. The two species are in a state of truce, until powerful vampire Legion is broken free from his prison, and the werewolves find themselves having to face a vampire threat once more. This felt like a more typical, classic tale of werewolves against vampires to me, the rustic setting and gothic overtones enjoyable and fun none the less. Pack against clan, but there are also other forces afoot too.

Rounding the book off is an excerpt from another of Toneye’s books: Wolvz: Whispers of War. I didn’t read this as I wouldn’t want to judge a story from an excerpt, nor already be familiar with the tale if I ever read it in its entirety.

What we have in Fangtastic Tales of Werewolf Savagery are five werewolf tales that give the reader a dose of that claw-and-tooth loving vibe, the kind of enraptured appreciation of how terrifying (and thrilling) it would be to actually be a werewolf, or to even be hunted and chased by one.

The humans involved all come to gain an understanding of the law of the tooth, whether as victim or convert, and the gore, when it happens, is vivid and visceral. If I had to choose a favourite tale, it would probably be Hunter’s Moon, in part due to its swift escalation, and also due to its brutal ending.

View more about Fangtastic Tales of Werewolf Savagery here.

I was given an advance review copy of this book.

Book Title: Fangtastic Tales of Werewolf Savagery

Book Author: Toneye Eyenot

Publisher: Luniakk Publications

Released: 21 March 19

Why I Think Subnautica is One of the Best Horror Games

Why I Think Subnautica is One of the Best Horror Games

By Casey Douglass

Subnautica is a game that I almost didn’t buy. I’d had an interest, then a disinterest, and then things seemed to align and I saw it on sale and picked it up. I knew the kind of game I was getting: a sci-fi water-based survival game with exploring and beasties. What I didn’t realise is that Subnautica would give me some of the best experiences of horror and awe that I’ve probably encountered. Which, as surprises go, was a most welcome one.

The life pod with the wreckage of the Aurora behind.

The game begins with a spaceship, the Aurora, plummeting through the sky, a life-pod splashing down in water and a nice bit of fire-extinguishing. Then the longer-term survival begins. Everything you need is scattered for miles around, the groaning, flaming Aurora blotting the horizon. You can’t stay long underwater before running out of oxygen. You also don’t have much equipment. Or food. Or drinking water. As situations go, it’s a grim one. But to paraphrase The Martian’s Mark Watney... ‘Fuck you water-planet!’

My Seamoth in the moon-pool

The early game is spent creating basic equipment, scavenging resources and scanning everything you

can find to see if it’s useful. Before long, you will have moved from your small life pod to a base of your own construction. You will create a mini-sub called a Seamoth, and you will likely have swanky things like battery chargers, food-growing beds and sonar. Sonar links to one of the first ways that the game wowed me.

Sonar revealing the terrain

As you might imagine, shallow water is easy to see through. As you explore, the sea-bed dips away from you into ominous looking darkness. You might catch sight of something lurking out there, or even hear the alien-cry of some vast predator. But it’s all shrouded in murk. It’s like looking into the abyss of space, but scarier in some ways, more personal and reachable, rather than infinite darkness. You know there is a bottom to it, where unseen things dwell and cavort and consume. Pinging your sonar reveals the secret of the contours around you, but fades moments later, like the ultimate tease.

My humble base

As you push on, scanning and discovering abandoned places, you get the chance to build a Cyclops, a larger submarine. When I finally built mine, I was amazed at the size of it. My base at the time had four rooms, a moon-pool (a snazzy underwater docking room) and various corridors, yet the Cyclops, while narrower, sat three stories tall and loomed next to it like a leviathan of my own making. I wasn't expecting it to be so big. When you turn the engine on it rumbles and purrs with a power that the tiny Seamoth can only dream of. Oh, and that Seamoth can drive up into the Cyclops’s bowels and dock, strapping itself in to come along for the ride.

My new Cyclops 'looming'

The thing is, and I don’t mind admitting it, I’ve barely taken my Cyclops ten yards. During the early game, I lost two Seamoths to things that latched on and tore them apart. I’m wary of my Cyclops meeting the same fate. Sure, I can build another one, given the time and resources, but right now, I find myself sat in a comfy zone of mild fear. I’ve carried on exploring with my Seamoth, even built the Prawn suit that enables the player to bound around like a little underwater mech, but the Cyclops sits and waits for me, wondering when I will feel the urge to go deeper.

I know there are bigger things out there, deeper darknesses swirling with creatures that, if provoked, would attack me and destroy me. I also know that the answers to the various mysteries around the planet, and my own survival, lie down there too. I can definitely sympathise with Bilbo Baggins sneaking into the Lonely Mountain. You want to go but you don’t. That’s where I am. And I’m enjoying it. I can dictate the pace, and stretch out the anticipation as long as I feel like it.

At the moment, I am scouring the safer areas for resources, enjoying my feeling of relative safety. Every time I come to one of those areas of extreme depth, I ping my sonar and watch the red grid slide down a previously unseen funnel, and not even come close to showing the bottom. I hear things roar and take heed of the depth warning coming from my craft’s A.I, and I know I will find out what is at the bottom soon.

Fresh underwear time.

I never expected Subnautica to cause the feelings to arise that it has so far. It’s a different kind of fear to that found in a game like Alien: Isolation or Outlast. They provide a more acute fear. Subnautica’s is a nagging unease that occasionally results in moments of panic-fuelled retreat and loss, but it is more seductive for that very reason.

If you like horror games and have not tried Subnautica, due to it not really looking like a horror game, take a closer look. Visit Unknown Worlds Entertainment here to view the official site.

Dark Ambient Review: Faversham

Dark Ambient Review: Faversham

Review by Casey Douglass

Faversham is a collaboration between musicians Mauri Edo and Leighton Arnold. The album was born from a lengthy improvisation session, and then duly shaped by long-distance conversations and edits into a 5 track collection of dark ambient sound. The result for the listener is an album of bitter-sweet spaces in which the moods of hope and threat seem to gently battle for supremacy.

Album Description: Faversham is a collection of dark soundscapes, sprinkled with hope at times. The result of mixing guitar passages, low-frequency drones, field recordings, bells and traditional Korean instruments. The tracks evoke a landscape of barren lands, abandoned factories, old forests and a thick fog that surrounds the everything.

As is often the way with my dark ambient listening, Faversham created a kind of narrative for me, one about a dark village nestling in the bosom of an isolated valley, each track progressing the story further. Opening track Watchtower’s bell-tolling and deep crackling throb seems to suggest the shadows cast by the setting sun, the smooth hilltops somehow casting jagged, long-nailed stabs of darkness across the village besieged by some unknown threat.

If the first track was the oncoming gloom, the next, Kapela Mira, is the defiance. It opens with a harsh shimmer and the sound of insects, but soon warms into gentle piano and guitar notes. There is an underlying pulsing bass sound, but the lighter tones and melody seemed to show the defiant occupants of the village singing to display that they won’t sit and cower in silence.

Currents is the third track, one that starts with a low vibration, a bit like a petrol-fuelled generator. A tinkling beat joins, and before long, crackling notes are plucked. Strings feel like they warp, and the deep pulsing that flows beneath everything oozes threat. For me, this track was the evil wandering the streets, looking for anyone foolish enough to be out and alone. I really enjoyed the crackles that accompanied the notes on this track, they almost hint at some kind of etheric trembling.

The scene shifted for me when I came to the penultimate track Forest Outpost. I let the title lead me here and found myself looking down towards the ink-stained village from a high place. A shimmering rhythm opens things, crackling its companion once more. Wolf-howl tones raise and breathe as dawn kisses the outpost, the lone occupant wondering if there is anyone left to go home to.

The final track is Tunnel, a harsher track that opens with an engine-like swell of activity. Muted crashing and tumbling sit behind it. Maybe this track is the occupant of the Forest Outpost making their way to the village by way of a hidden tunnel. All I know is that as the track continues, certain of the instruments, particularly the hyang piri, put me in mind of some of the tracks from the Hannibal TV series soundtrack. I’m not sure if they were the same instruments, but they had the same kind of feel, something dark and primal.

Faversham is a dark ambient album in which the layers of each soundscape seem to have a clean purity about them. I never felt that there were too many elements vying for my attention, and the ones that were there, such as the crackling or chiming, sat nicely in the soundscape, easy to enjoy and absorb. As you can probably guess from my review, I enjoyed the images that Faversham brought to my mind, and I also appreciated the changes in mood, from threat, to hope, and back again. If you like your dark ambient to seduce you with crackles and gentle notes, but to underlie this with unnerving bassy threat, Faversham might be the album for you.

Click here to go to the Faversham page on Bandcamp. You can also watch the teaser video below:

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Faversham

Album Artist: Mauri Edo, Leighton Arnold

Label: Chemical Imbalance

Released: Jan 3, 2019