Dark Ambient Interview: Scott Lawlor

Anyone who knows Scott Lawlor will be all too aware of how prolific he is with his music releases. It’s a good thing that his music is well worth listening to! Scott kindly agreed to share a few words with me in this interview. We touch on how he can be so prolific, the challenges of composing music as a blind person, the virtue of creative constraint versus total freedom, and the most mundane sound he feels that he has ever recorded. Thanks for joining us and I hope you enjoy the interview.

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Casey: Scott, even though I am familiar with how prolific you are with your music releases, it still surprises me just how frequently I see that you’ve released a new album on Bandcamp. What are the main factors in your life, that you think may contribute to how you can achieve such a release rate, how does this current rate compare with periods earlier in your musical life, where you felt the need to take a break from things, and what was different between the two periods?

Scott: I am a stay-at-home dad and since my kids are in school, I have a lot of time to compose and release music. Some years have been busier than others regarding actual number of releases but through all of that time, my situation has been the same.

I've got many more albums on our network that I've recorded over the last 7 years, so if I quit writing new music right now, I'd still have releases for a long time to come. I'm always working on new music so the odds of catching up to myself are astronomically impossible at this point.

Casey: As a blind composer, I know that you occasionally tweet about accessibility issues with the tools or apps that you want to use. What kinds of accessibility issue do you find the most irritating, which apps or tools do you use that you feel handle things really well, and more broadly, what is your usual process for composing a new track, which tools do you tend to use the most etc.?

Scott: Well, for a long time, I had a Roland fa08, Sound Forge and Audacity as my main way of composing music and though this set of tools allowed me to create many albums over the 6 years that I used them, they weren't as accessible as the current tools I utilize.

The menus on the Roland didn't talk and I was limited in how I could shape sound from within the synth, so this lead me to using things like Audacity for shaping recorded sound from the Roland into something totally different. Even though it was an interesting experience to do things this way and I got quite proficient after developing such a streamlined workflow, the results from one project to another weren't as different sonically as I thought they'd be.

As an example, Paul Stretch is a tool that I used to use quite a lot in my early work and though it can create some interesting results, if you change the default values, it's something I hardly ever use anymore, or, if I do use it, it's part of something with a good many more layers and elements mixed in.

I think part of the reason PS has such a bad rap in the ambient community is probably because people didn't change the values, and just released things that were run through it with no further processing after the fact. Just look at all the videos of popular songs that were run through this plugin and uploaded to YouTube as an example.

The same can be said for other effects inside the box and so the point of all this is to say that, though for me, this method worked for a while, it's actually pretty easy to tell which effects I used, particularly on the noise projects that I've done over the years.

Now that I've said all that, the tools that I use now are totally different and they're accessible with speech so it's much easier to manipulate sound and add interesting effects where this wasn't possible before. I use Komplete Kontrol from Native Instruments, and various third party instruments by companies like Soundiron, Soniccouture, Luftrum, Sudden Audio and, of course other things from Native Instruments themselves.

The most time consuming part of composing now is deciding on which sound to use. Sometimes it takes me longer to find the sound I want than it does to create the actual work in question.

Casey: In an interview with the From Corners Unknown podcast, you touched on the topic of how constraints can often aid creativity, talking about how contests like the ambientonline.org forum’s One Sample Dare Challenge can give creating a different focus and challenge you in different ways. How much constraint do you enjoy before you feel it becomes a true hindrance, how often might you sit and compose with no purpose in mind, and the theme later suggests itself, and do you prefer one approach over the other?

Scott: Most of the time, I compose without constraint, just letting the improvisation go where it will as I play on the keyboard and upon playback over time, a theme or concept will come to me for the music. I do prefer this approach but am thinking of revisiting the ambientonline.org One Sample Dare challenges since I have new effects, software and hardware that are much more accessible.

Casey: In the aforementioned From Corners Unknown interview, you talked about some of the sounds that you recorded, including workmen breaking your house windows, at the time that it was your turn to submit the sample for the One Sample Dare Challenge. I was wondering, what is the strangest or most obscure sound that you can ever remember sampling, and which mundane thing have you recorded, that gave you the most surprising and satisfying sound, once you started experimenting with it?

Scott: The most mundane thing I've ever recorded was the spin cycle of my old washing machine and I took that recording and created an album called Spin Drone, which, looking back, isn't really that interesting but some people really seem to love that album.

I think the most interesting thing I recorded was different objects in our old clothes dryer which I then used for an album called the Ambient Series 1, Symphony for Prepared Dryer. I put many different things in the dryer including silverware, wooden alphabet blocks, shoes, coins, and even sweet potatoes, recorded from 19 seconds to 3 minutes, depending on the item and then processed those sounds to create the album.

My wife wouldn't allow me to put her pipe wrench or glass in the appliance and you can hear her promptly rejecting both ideas in the last track of the album which is the documentary for the project.

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Thanks very much to Scott for answering my questions. If you’d like to find Scott’s music, you can find him on Bandcamp at this link.

Rest in Peace Mount Shrine

On the 16th of April 2021, dark ambient label Cryo Chamber shared the following tweet, a tweet announcing that Cesar Alexandre, aka Mount Shrine, passed away from Covid:

Cesar of Mount Shrine has passed away from Covid.
Rest in Peace friend. Your memory carries on through your music 🖤

— Cryo Chamber (@CryoChamber) April 16, 2021

Even though I couldn't say that I knew Cesar well, we did share some emails, and an interview he was kind enough to give me. His dark ambient music is brilliant, and I still have yet to come across someone who can make rainy drones as soothing as he does. 

My condolences and best wishes go out to Cesar's loved ones. Rest in Peace Cesar.

Dark Ambient Review: glass fawn

Review By Casey Douglass

During one of my many perusings of Bandcamp, I discovered glass fawn, a dark ambient album from uncertain, a music project from artist Florian-Ayala Fauna. As I previewed the tracks of glass fawn, I was particularly taken with the feeling of bleak melancholy that seemed to manifest in them. It’s for this reason that I decided to write this review.

The opening track is “from falling waters” and it certainly sets a mood and the scene. It begins with a warm, low and pulsing drone, a drone that soon mingles with the sound of sea waves. The waves feel like they are chopped or foreshortened after awhile, and then a juddering, screechy sound joins them. There are other sounds that emerge too, rasping sighs and exhalations at the edge of things, creating a maelstrom of pressure. For me, this whole track created the mental image of a sea of lost soils boiling, not in hell, but in a roiling sea, beneath a black sky, with no land in sight.

“teeth, water and soil” is another track that gripped me. It starts with the strange string notes from the end of the track before, but itself blooms with bat-like chitterings, the muted sound of cascading rocks and an airy drone. The drone has a sacral chant aesthetic, peaceful yet at odds with the sea-sawing string-notes that dance above things. After the midpoint, a buzzing, warbling noise begins, one that put me in mind of the sound sea-birds sometimes make. Not a call but a chuntering. This track furthered my impressions gleaned in “from falling waters”, but this time the waves and wind brush against an island of black rock, a cacophony of seabirds mocking in the sky as oily waves lick the edges.

A lighter track (in comparison to the darkness of the previous ones at least) is “the white stag”. It starts with a high, sparkling tone, and a distant animal call and a rumbling. There is a rustling, and what sounds like fluttering paper, along with a resonant tone that hangs in the air like a snow flake. Slow string-notes weave through the soundscape, and the track, though dark still, feels peaceful. Maybe the white stag of the track title is slowly walking through a snow-dusted woodland, the mist between the trees making everything shimmer. A grinding, rougher quality emerges after the midpoint, a different, gentle tone accompanying it. A lovely track.

The last track that I wanted to write about is “pilgrimage”. If the previous track felt like it was set in nature, this one feels more urban. It features a chimey, droning space, a strange crying call, and has possible “city” sounds in the mix. I thought I heard what could have been the drone of cars passing on a wet road, and after the midpoint, a “garage door” maelstrom begins. If you have ever been near a metal garage door that someone has kicked hard, you might be able to guess what I mean when I describe the vibrating sound in this way. Maybe the stag of the previous track finds itself lost and alone in a hostile city. It seems possible.

As dark ambient albums go, glass fawn is certainly up there with some of the darkest I’ve heard. It doesn’t achieve this darkness by sinister chanting or some of the more “horror” styled tones that you might be used to. The darkness on glass fawn, to me at least, felt more subtle. I also really enjoyed how pretty much every track dove-tailed nicely with the one before and after, the tones at the end of one encroaching into the beginning of the next, sometimes soon to fade, but at other times, to stay a little longer. A fantastic album that is well worth the attention of your ears.

Visit the glass fawn page on Bandcamp for more information.

Album Title: glass fawn

Album Artist: uncertain

Released: 11 Jan 2010

Dark Ambient Review: Isolated Tales

Review By Casey Douglass

The Covid lockdowns in so many parts of the world, introduced a good number of people to the raw reality of how many hours there really are in a day. Yes, there are twenty four, but if you are ill, locked-down or alone, each of those hours can feel like its own decade. Isolated Tales is a dark ambient album from ElectronicDeathBlackDogs, and it was conceived during that time of stay at home orders, uncertainty, and creeping despair.

The track Endlessly Searching Through Empty Rooms is a great embodiment of these feelings. It begins with a low, trundling machine-like sound, with pacing footsteps and creaking echoes filling an empty space. There are distant impacts, maybe doors slamming in the wind. There are also closer sounds of the footstep owner shutting doors too. A light, string-like tone begins, floating in the air above what feels like a harsh concrete world of abandonment. At one point, I wasn’t sure if I heard distant shouts or cries. This is a haunting track, and I really liked the way that the footsteps and door shutting kept appearing.

Crushing The Construct is another atmospheric track. This one feels technological though. It starts with a knocking, as if against glass, with what sounds like a flurry of wings answering each time. Maybe this is how a bird in a glass enclosure might react to continual annoyances from its owner. A growing hollow drone emerges, soon joined by electronic screeching that rasps through the soundscape. For me, this track brought about feelings of being trapped and tormented, possibly by technology. It felt high-tech and spiteful. Maybe it’s an analogy for how shit social media can be, especially when people are stuck at home and easily outraged by stuff that doesn’t remotely effect them.

Food For The Trees is the last track on the album, and probably the darkest. It opens with the sound of the wind and a faint, wet, crumpling sound. The sound of a shovel sliding through dirt comes at regular intervals, a deep meditative chant filling the air. Deep impacts begin, languid string-notes aping the tones of the chant. As the track progresses, all of these sounds seem to coalesce to make a clattering, mechanical rhythm. If this isn’t the track to someone digging a grave in the shadow of some kind of catastrophe, I don’t know what is.

Isolated Tales is a collection of dark tracks that really do seem to fit the strange times that we still find ourselves in. Its soundscapes all feel nicely dark and spacious, and many do contain moments of lightness too, just to keep things the right side of gloomy. Isolated Tales is a great album for dreary days and insufferable nights.

Visit the Isolated Tales page on Bandcamp for more information.

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Isolated Tales

Album Artist: ElectronicDeathBlackDogs

Released: 7 Sept 2020

Dark Ambient Review: The Sleeper's Night Journey

Review By Casey Douglass

The Sleeper's Night Journey is a dark ambient album from The Great Schizm, an album that takes our nocturnal dreams as its theme, depicting all manner of strange vistas with its drone and field-recording-laced soundscapes.

The tracks of The Sleeper's Night Journey seem to loosely fall into two categories: some feature smooth, delicate tones and drones, the others are more field-recording heavy and scenic. The Platform is track two of the album and is a great example of this latter type of track. It opens with the sound of wind and echoing creaks. A low drone emerges, accompanied by a clock-like chiming that is quicker at times than others. I think this is my favourite track, as it creates such a feeling of being high up on a precarious platform, maybe looking down over a stone ruin of some kind. The creaking comes at regular intervals, almost like breath filling wooden lungs. In the second half of the track, echoing impacts sound, like something bouncing off the collapsed stone walls. An atmospheric and ominous track.

Perception Shift is the track that follows. It starts with a growing low drone that vanishes to be replaced by light, almost quirky tones. These tones for me, felt like the reflection of golden sunlight on gently rippling water. The drone and these tones seem to interplay for awhile, but around the midpoint, the track changes to a darker space. A lower drone takes over, distant squeaking and clattering metal can be heard, a roaming buzz roams, and the sound of voices and distant hammering can be heard. The track lightens again towards the end, a light melody knocking out into the darkness. I liked how the feel of each part of the track seemed to tie into the perception shift mentioned in the title, like seeing things anew each time.

An Unexplored Land is another track that I enjoyed. It opens with a warm drone and faintly clattering chimes. It feels airy yet echoey, and later gives the impression of wind or breath. Around the midpoint, a low pulsing howl or animal call can be heard, echoing drips and a roaming hiss of air. Then comes an industrial “trundling” sound. What this track suggested to me, was someone emerging from a cave-like passage and cresting the hill of a shadowy industrial landscape at night. I found it to be a peaceful track, but also another ominous one, making me wonder what might be happening in the darkened factories that still belched white smoke in the moonlit sky.

There are two other tracks that I also wanted to quickly mention. Distant Realms of the Continent is one. Early on in the track, and throughout for that matter, a strange distant shrilling call can be heard. I really enjoyed this element as it felt like some kind of exotic dreamscape full of strange creatures, but at a safe enough distance to be enjoyable. Sunken Civilization is another very atmospheric track, but this time plunging the listener into a bubbling, water-filled space, with drips, drops and at one point, a strange fun-fair type melody. Both tracks were really fun to experience.

The Sleeper's Night Journey is a collection of dark ambient tracks that really embody the strangeness and ethereal nature of dreams. Whether it’s the lullaby-like high tones or the rushing wind of otherworldly vistas, if I had a night of dreaming that followed the impressions that these tracks gave me, I’d wake up a very happy person.

Visit the The Sleeper's Night Journey page on Bandcamp for more information.

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: The Sleeper's Night Journey

Album Artist: The Great Schizm

Label: Cloud Hunter Records

Released: 14 Sept 2014

Dark Ambient Review: Drone Islands - Stellar

Review By Casey Douglass

Space certainly seems to be a great fit as the inspiration for music that loves to drone, the vast distances and cold danger just the kind of setting for sounds that seem to continue on and on. Drone Islands – Stellar is a collection of tracks inspired by astronomical events, and features a variety of dark ambient artists.

I think that my favourite track is Planetary Chain from Grey Frequency. It opens with a mid-level drone, one that has a vibrating edge. A siren-like drone rises behind it, the whoosh of what might be a rocket engine too, but the vibrating edge is what set the scene for me. I couldn’t help but think about how spare change rattles on a car dashboard. With the space setting of this album, I had visions of a spacecraft manoeuvring in the inky blackness of space, one of the pilot’s keepsakes buzzing on top of the control station. After the midpoint, wave-like sounds rustle against the ears, piano notes joining them a littler later. This led me to wonder if the ship is headed down some kind of galactic plug-hole.

PLUHM’s Sospensione is another track that I enjoyed, although in the beginning, I wasn’t so sure. It starts with a high, organ-like tone that crackles and breaks. A low drone sounds beneath as the notes echo away, small crackles popping as they distort. A buzzing begins, and when it ends, the soundscape has changed to a different space, one with an electronic heart-beat tone, plucked notes, and with a soaring drone behind. This buzzing occurs again, and once again the soundscape changes. It feels like whatever is going on is evolving, maybe like the stages a star goes through in its life time, or on a smaller scale, the journey an astronaut might make into the stars. By the end of the track, I had warmed to it a great deal, it’s a fascinating listen.

Astral Bridge Severance from Infinexhuma is the opening track of the album, and another one that stood out for me. It begins with a vibrating and echoing soundscape, metallic knocking sounds seeming to stir the space, a low hiss roaming, a distant shimmer beckoning. This track felt like the film Event Horizon to me, a drifting spaceship about which no one knows where it’s been or why it has appeared now. It’s sinister. The soundscape becomes a bit more cacophonous as it continues, a feeling of energy building up or maybe an engine flaring into life. There are rasping drones, female vocals, and an effect that seems like a bestial roar. This soundscape, for me, was one of threat, collapse and unknown forces. I like those things a great deal.

Drone Islands – Stellar is a varied collection of dark ambient space and drone scapes. I tended to enjoy the darker, deeper tracks more than some of the higher pitched creations, but all of the tracks have their own charm. If you like your dark ambient cosmological and droning, you should check out Drone Islands – Stellar.

Visit the Drone Islands - Stellar page on Bandcamp for more information.

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Drone Islands - Stellar

Album Artist: Various

Label: Eighth Tower Records

Released: 2 April 2021

Dark Ambient Review: Infernal Om

Review By Casey Douglass

Normality is a godsend for people who like to create dark art. What better way to frame some strange happenings by comparing them to the “normal” life of someone else? Gravechakra’s dark ambient album Infernal Om, does just that, painting the picture of an ordinary person, experiencing extraordinarily dark things, and having to keep them to himself.

The album description sets this all up nicely. The year is 1963, the place is the USSR. A regular, normal man going about his life, becomes plagued by unsettling voices and creepy visions. He keeps this fact secret, afraid of being thought mad. Luckily, or unluckily for him, he’s not mad, but is in fact receiving messages from a strange order of beings from another world.

The tracks of Infernal Om come in a number of forms. There are dark, musical tracks that give vent to the indecipherable language of the otherworldly order. There are also narrative tracks that give the listener an insight into how the protagonist is feeling about the state of affairs in which he finds himself. I particularly enjoyed how the narrative tracks blended with the others. If the track before ended with gravelly footsteps, these sit at the beginning of the narrative one that follows.

The musical tracks often feature the guttural grunts and invocations of the otherworldly imposters. The album description explains that they are speaking something called Cordoriborium, a language that will only be deciphered in the coming years. In aesthetic, the often multiple voices put me in mind of the kinds of grunting you will hear in certain types of heavy metal. They are often accompanied by unsettling effects in the soundscape, and a variety of drumbeats and electronic tones.

One of my favourite tracks is Invocation of Bestiurgs. It opens with a bass beat, a scuffing sandpaper rhythm, and a prolonged echoing sigh or exhalation. An electronic tone begins, accompanied by the sound of air-raid sirens. Two voices begin to chant or talk from ear to ear, the sirens continuing behind them. Later, things quieten a little, the soundscape becoming a windy space with rasping invocations or shouts. After this period come the wet, glooping sounds of what just might be something being born into this world, or maybe feeding of some kind. I enjoyed the retro-horror feel of this track, and also the mixture of the different electronic tones and drumbeats in the darkness.

Another of the tracks that I enjoyed was Narration 1. It opens with the aforementioned footsteps on gravel. We hear the main character’s voice, and it has some really intriguing lines. My favourite line is “They will now scream me into another world!” And wouldn’t you know it, you can hear them start to do so as he utters the words. I really like the concept that the telltale of the other beings’ approach is the screaming beginning. The fact that it “screams him into another world” just seems so dark and creepy.

Alchemy of Liquid Souls is the last track that I wanted to specifically mention. It begins with an echoing beat in what feels like a cavernous space. It fuzzes at times, and a distant droning seeps in. Hissing whispers pierce the soundscape, soon followed by one of the guttural voices, with a dog-howl accompaniment. There is an electronic tone that sweeps upwards and then repeats. The soundscape feels like one of lifting up or manifestation. Near the midpoint, it smooths to plucked notes and a mellow feeling. The sound of breaking glass interrupts this peace, and the previous sounds resume, as if someone has broken a window and let the other place in again. This is a really fun, brooding track, and I really liked the broken window moment.

Infernal Om is an album that makes great use of field recordings, human voices and electronic beats and tones, to create sinister, interesting soundscapes. The narrative tracks deepen the effect of the soundscapes, and the soundscapes give the narrative tracks a more concrete impact. I haven’t heard anything quite like it and I’m glad that I stumbled across it.

Visit the Infernal Om page on Bandcamp for more information.

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Infernal Om

Album Artist: Gravechakra

Released: 19 Dec 2020