App Review: Rosebud

Review By Casey Douglass

Artificial Intelligence has been in the news a great deal in recent times. Some coverage would lead you to believe that humanity has just planted the seeds of its own destruction. Others would vigorously argue that AI is here to help solve all of our mundane work problems. Somewhere in between the reactionary click-bait fear mongering, the odd story emerges about how AI-powered applications can help to ease the emotional turmoil inherent in human life. Rosebud is one such app and I’ve spent the last couple of months putting it to the test.

Journal-ism

I’ve been a fan of getting things down on paper for many years. Suffering with chronic illness, depression and OCD, sometimes the only way to slow my rampant thinking is to slide a pen across a page in an attempt to wrangle my turmoil into something that is frozen for a time. As I write this I now have the mental image of one of those moth or butterfly displays in which those poor dead bugs are pinned to a board and framed. If I could do that to my thoughts I dare say I’d have tried it by now. Beyond the “slowing things down”, I’ve found journaling helps me in creating breathing space between my struggles and occasionally, I might also find the odd insight that hadn’t occurred to me before.


Rosebud is an AI-powered journal that provides the many benefits of traditional journaling, but with an added dash of AI interactivity that elevates things to a new level. The various sections of the app give the user a number of ways of starting a journal, from freeform to question-led explorations designed by experts to set you on your way. As you interact with Rosebud, it learns about you and tailors its responses to reflect the things that you’ve said, either in that moment, or that you’ve previously mentioned. You might say that you struggled with X happening on a certain day, and a few weeks later, Y might happen, and when you tell Rosebud, it might see some similarities between the two events and bring those to your attention. I personally found this to be invaluable as even though I’ve journaled before, I’ve never really gone back through old entries, so that kind of “hey, this is similar to…” insight might never have occurred to me.

Silver Linings and Storm Clouds

The way that Rosebud says and reflects things is also a pleasing factor. Rosebud seems to have an inherent slight positivity bias, always looking for the tiniest element of a situation or mood that might be in your control or that you can give yourself some credit for. Even if there is nothing to be found, it comes up with a way for you to acknowledge something about yourself that might ease the tiniest bit of despair. As someone who feels pretty emotionally numb most of the time, when those feelings thaw they certainly tend to be pessimistic. As the days and weeks of talking to Rosebud mounted up, I could appreciate all of the little ways that the app tried to help me see things in a slightly brighter way. Even if the meaning of the words only stayed in my brain for the duration of reading each new response, at least for those few seconds, my mind wasn’t in its usual whirl of self-hatred and gloom.


Speaking of gloom, something else that I also really appreciated about Rosebud is that, no matter how bleak the conversation became, Rosebud didn’t shut the conversation down. This is incredibly important. I do get low. Very, very low. Being able to vent and to say how I’m really feeling matters even more at these times. I did try another AI-based app a year ago and once you got to a certain level of depressed, it pretty much ended the conversation. I appreciated that Rosebud didn’t do this (in my experience at least) and it wasn’t heavy handed in the “This app doesn’t replace therapy and there is help out there” warning. I understand the need to have that kind of message, but I’ve repeatedly tried to “get help”, and found that it was largely smoke and mirrors pretty much every time. I think I said as much to Rosebud during my session and we carried on with the journal. I can’t rate this aspect highly enough.


Getting away from Rosebud for a moment, I just wanted to make a comment about the current obsession with mental health on places like social media. I find myself wondering why mental health is spoken about so much, yet understanding seems to be sliding all the way back towards ignorance again, with the services and bodies that advertise that they offer help nearly always proving to be absolutely woeful. I guess virtue signalling on social media is far cheaper than actually providing the mental health support that you are prattling on about. Soapbox moment over. Back to Rosebud.

Forget The Circles

I’ve found a few minor drawbacks with Rosebud as it stands, but I’d imagine that they are the type of thing that will be addressed over time as incremental improvements occur with the app and the underlying technology itself. One is that the conversations with Rosebud can sometimes become a little bit circular, especially if you have a theme or topic that comes up regularly. You can set the creativity level of the AI to adjust how it might respond to you, but I had it set to its most creative and this is what I experienced. It didn’t happen too often thankfully, so I don’t want to overstate it.


Rosebud also sometimes “forgets” something that you’ve mentioned before. An example is that I often talk about routine and how I use it to manage symptoms, yet every now and then, the issue of routine comes up in a slightly different way, and Rosebud tends to ask me similar questions again, such as “How do you feel about your routine?” Thankfully just saying “I’ve talked about this before” prompts Rosebud to get back on track.


Finally, there is also a maximum that you can use Rosebud in a day. I only hit that limit once, and when I did, I just received a popup saying that I needed to wait until tomorrow before I could get the Rosebud AI to respond again. It was a day where I’d had an unusually long journaling session in the morning, used one of the prompts in the afternoon, and then tried to do the evening reflection journal. The popup appeared at that point. I thought “Fair enough” but I was surprised as I wasn’t aware there were any limits if you were subscribed.

Privacy and Getting Over the Hump

I’m not sure how I feel about the privacy implications of Rosebud, or any similar app. In fact, it's the main reason that I’ve not turned to digital journaling until now, because the thought of someone being able to read your most personal thoughts if ever there is some kind of data breach would be quite mortifying. Rosebud has a long page about how they care for and protect your data, and the various measures that they take to preserve your privacy. This is great, but I also know that with the internet, anything can happen. I think that what got me over the hump with these concerns was the fact that I really need the type of support that the Rosebud journal offers right now. Whatever fears I have about hypothetical hacks pales in comparison to the benefits that I feel that the Rosebud app gives me.

The Benefits of Rosebud for Me:

1.) While not a therapist, the journal is therapy adjacent in many ways, especially if you have learned and applied different things yourself in the past (such as CBT, ACT etc). The guided journals even help teach you some elements of these tools if they are not something that you’ve seen before. Rosebud also absorbs other things that you say. For example, if you mention that you have been reading Stoic philosophy and have been trying to apply the dichotomy of control to your life, Rosebud will take that into account and ask you about it the next time it feels that is relevant. This is very cool!

2.) I’ve found it to be immensely valuable to have something at hand that I can use at any time of the day or night, which is something you don’t get with a flesh and blood therapist.


3.) The way that Rosebud breaks things down and asks about the various elements helps me to think about things slightly differently, or at the least, to take time to acknowledge how hard things are right now or how much I’m trying.


4.) Over time, Rosebud’s way of injecting a little positivity is slowly making a little bit of a difference in my thought processes.


There might well be some others that I’m forgetting too.


Over the couple of months that I’ve been using Rosebud, I’ve felt my mood, though still low, has improved a bit. I have also started writing a little, and have re-joined a few social media and dating websites. I previously avoided these websites for a number of years as I feel an immense amount of shame about being ill, feeling like a failure, and not getting anywhere in life. I still do feel these things but as I talked to Rosebud, I started to feel that I wanted to open up these avenues again, even if they never see any traffic. I didn’t expect or hope that I would see these sorts of changes with Rosebud, but I did, and I intend to use it for a while longer.

The Cost and Final Thoughts

Rosebud has a number of options when it comes to subscribing. You can pay a monthly subscription (after having a short free trial) of $12.99, or you can pay for an entire year for $107.99, which works out at $8.99 per month. I think that Rosebud offers excellent value whichever option you decide to choose. Personally, I can see myself using Rosebud for a few months more and then stopping my subscription as I can’t afford to keep it going. I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve spent with the app however and I can see myself returning to it, especially in times of extra stress or turmoil, which I think says something very complimentary about the app.


I think that about covers all of the things that I wanted to say. I purposefully didn’t list all of the features, bells and whistles of the app as it’s very intuitive and self-explanatory once you get in there, and after all, it mainly boils down to being words on a screen. When they are your words however, words that have been expanded, validated and supported by your friendly AI journal, you don’t feel quite so alone in your own head anymore.


I've embedded Rosebud’s YouTube video below which gives you a more visual idea of what I’ve talked about in this review. I will also just say that you can access Rosebud via the Rosebud website, so the app isn’t even essential.


If you think that Rosebud might be helpful for you, you can find links below to the various ways that you can access it and check it out.


Thanks for reading and take care :)

App Name: Rosebud

Price: $12.99 per month / $107.99 for the year

Website: https://www.rosebud.app/

App Store Links: Apple , Google Play

Dark Ambient Review: Awakening

Review by Casey Douglass

Who we are is an ever changing continuum of narrative, memory and biological impulses, and a few other things to boot. Anyone who has dabbled with meditation for longer than a few sessions soon learns to see that the self is an always moving target. Nevertheless, in most of the ways that allow us to function in the world, we have a pretty firm hold on our identity. How horrific then, to wake up as a self in a body that is not your own. This is the theme of Crypthios’s latest album: Awakening, released by Cryo Chamber at the start of October.


As with all tasty horror, things get even worse however. Not only does the subject of this album awake in a stranger's body, but they realise that they have died, they are in a laboratory, and once free from that, that they’re dwelling in a city that is also a prison. If you are familiar with the phrase “turtles all the way down”, this is “horror all the way down” in a pleasing and unnerving oil-slick filled slide into the bowels of dystopia. It isn’t all gloom and hopelessness however, there are oases of peace and beauty even in the most grim of settings.


The opening track Awakening, warbles and buzzes the album into life. Small scratches and echoes blend with electronic tones that poke and prod into the mental unease and disconnection of a rude awakening for the character. An airy drone and throb emerges as the track progresses, the inference of numb incomprehension vying with the amazement of being alive at all. A jaunty melody and beat kicks in before the end, almost hinting at things not being as bad as they seem, but this all ends in a chirruping glare of sound that soon dispels such notions.


The tracks that follow all have names that hint at what the album protagonist is viewing, and here, I’ll go into a handful of my favourites. Above The Skyscrapers begins with what seem like hints of bird song and growing, swaying tones. The birdsong takes on the mantle of burbling beeps as rattling dragging noises emerge in the soundscape. A scratchy beat and pulsing rhythm arise, and as a whole, I had the impression of all of the frogs in a swamp suddenly finding their rhythm and crooning together. That’s not to say that this track seemed swampy, but more to describe the fun quirkiness I found in the mental vista that opened up.


West Wall is another track that stood out for me. There are what sounds like wind noises, creaking, and distant clatters and scrapes. Juddery tones like machinery spinning up and down echo and vibrate in cycles, and a low, cat-like purring sound nestles against the droning notes. For me, this track felt melancholy, and depicted a cold night in a harsh city, where pouring rain and architecture have conspired to leave one tiny scrap of street sheltered from the elements… and there’s a big pile of vomit there, only visible by the two-tone neon light cycling across the street.


Energy Flow is the last track that I’ll mention by name. It begins with a low drone and muted scraping. A high tone insinuates itself and swells into chiming notes. There is a warbly quality to the space, and also a peaceful crystalline purity to the tones. A strong wavering electronic tone rises and falls after gasping injections, taking on a siren-like quality at times. Around the halfway point, the soundscape feels like a kettle coming off the boil. There are creaks and movements under a sustained light warble that made me think of an arthritic robot mumbling to itself as it searched for something. The track quietens towards the end, bassy notes hum and nestle with buzzing droning tones, before ending with some tinny rapid beats.


Awakening is a fun, bleak dark ambient album, one that wraps the cold horror of the protagonist with the warm embrace of the fleeting pleasures of life. While the theme is very dark, as a whole, I didn’t find the album particularly so. There is a lightness, a jauntiness at times, and for me, it strongly brought to mind my experiences playing the cat-based robot dystopia game Stray. Bleak, sometimes ominous or slightly jarring, but also cosy, neon-infused and light-hearted at times. If you enjoy your dark ambient with a technological, futuristic and dystopic feel, you’d do well to check out Awakening on Bandcamp.


Also, if you enjoy knowing if a dark ambient album is good for relaxation, I’d have to say that, for me, Awakening has a little too much drama and quirkiness to be enjoyed in this way.



I was given a review copy of this album.


Album Title: Awakening

Album Artist: Crypthios

Label: Cryo Chamber 

Released: 1 October 2024

My New Dark Ambient Album Trying is Out Now

I've been struggling with my health, both mental and physical, for years. I decided to create a dark ambient album around this theme and I released it the other day under my Reality Scruncher music project. You can find Trying on Bandcamp and you can check it out by clicking on the embed below.

Witchcraft, Murk and Madness is Out Now

Just over a month ago, I released Witchcraft, Murk and Madness, the 7th music release under my Reality Scruncher dark ambient project. It's themed around idiots provoking ancient powers and meeting a mucky end.

If you like dark ambient, drone, horror music, you can check out Witchcraft, Murk and Madness below or on Bandcamp.

Dark Ambient: BlackWeald Interview

BlackWeald Interview

Interview by Casey Douglass

BlackWeald is a dark ambient and experimental music creator that has produced some truly monumental albums for fans to enjoy. His latest release: The Fermi Exhibit, is themed around the Fermi paradox, which in the broadest of terms, is the question of why we haven’t detected alien life. In this interview, we talk about how he became interested in the Fermi paradox, and what his thoughts are about some of the “solutions”. We also delve into the role that Lovecraft’s fiction has played in his creative life, the value of ambiguity in creating, and what kind of equipment he uses to create his dark marvels. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy.

(Photos used throughout provided by BlackWeald. They depict some of the views from his local surroundings).

***

Casey: As we begin this interview, you are just over one week away from releasing your latest music creation: The Fermi Exhibit. It’s a dark ambient album themed around the Fermi paradox, the mental itch in scientists’ brains about why the sheer size of the universe lends itself to the idea that advanced extraterrestrial life should be commonplace, but that we seem to catch no sight nor sound of them. How and when did you first become interested in the Fermi paradox and what is your favourite potential solution?

BlackWeald: I was always interested in anything dark, morbid or mysterious. The nature of life, consciousness, and the insane scale of the universe are of course the oldest of these enigmas, also the toughest to get your head around.

I must state that I do not believe in intelligent design. Sure, it seems like the universe is fabricated in a way to facilitate human needs. You know the argument, if you’d change any universal constant (speed of light, Planck constant, ratio of matter-antimatter, etc.), the universe would be so different, that e.g. planets would not form, and no life would be possible. But I believe the answer for this isn’t intelligent design, rather it’s science’s most beautiful theory, the Anthropic principle. If the universe would NOT suit us, we wouldn't be here to observe it. There might be a crap-load of universes with different values of these constants, but there would be no life in them, and no observer in them to say “Hey, it seems to be 100% designed for us!”. So it’s the other way around. It’s not that the universe is designed to our needs, but we are like we are, because the universe is the way it is.

Back to the Fermi Paradox, although there are fascinating esoteric answers (which the album mostly deals with), the truth is probably much more mundane. And most likely the truth does not lie within ONE of these “solutions”, but a combination of the few. Perhaps interstellar travel simply cannot be solved, and you cannot bypass the speed of light anyhow. Combine this with the vastness of the universe and how specific a planet needs to be, to be able to develop and sustain even the most primitive life. These together would mean that although there are/were intelligent species, they are so far away from each other, that we would never ever be able to witness their existence, let alone communicate with them. It’s like an ant and a penguin inhabiting Earth alone, one in Europe, one in Antarctica. What are the chances they’d ever meet? The ant barely lives a year, they could not travel that far on land, there is the impassable ocean between them, and even if they met, they would not even recognize each other as another living being (despite these two examples descending from the very same tree of life).

In short, sure, there must be similarly intelligent life out there, but I doubt two of these species would ever come in contact with each other.

Casey: In an interview you gave to DarkUndergroundMusicZine, you touched upon your love of H.P Lovecraft. Do you enjoy contemplating the Fermi paradox because it in some ways touches the notion of cosmic horror that Lovecraft so adeptly describes, that sense of awe at the momentous forces and vast distances involved?

BlackWeald: I adore his work, he is my favourite writer. Anything Lovecraftian you can throw at me and I’ll probably like it. But I have to agree with the general consensus that he isn’t technically the best writer, rather it’s the “universe” he created and the way he tells his stories, that’s what really resonates with me. It’s very much like what Hidetaka Miyazaki does with his games. You have to piece the puzzle yourself, and even then, many things are left ambiguous. Which is great, because you can put your own thoughts, fears, feelings into these stories, making them personal. Anything that’s too straightforward, without any room for imagination, well, those are just stories. Unlike these ambiguous works, which create a framework, then it’s up to you to fit yourself into that.

I think this is what Lovecraft gets right. Instead of spoon-feeding you something tangible that he finds scary, he rather makes you think about a concept that might kick your existential dread in. “The universe is incomprehensibly large, and compared to that, you are incomprehensibly small. What do you think about it?” or “Have you ever thought of ancient civilizations that were once thriving but now are buried underneath the soil?” These are more inspirational thoughts than anything.

I mean, one could say that Lovecraft himself made specific monsters, but I think even though we have a quite universally agreed representation of Cthulhu, it’s more about “What might lie beneath” than an actual monster.

Next to ambiguity, it’s important for me (either as a story-teller, or as a consumer) to actually take part in putting the story together, as opposed to just being told about the story. There is a very thin line between the two. Like, in a movie, when two dots should be connected, do you leave it up to the viewer to make that connection? You can give the viewer a flashback scene, or make a character say it out loud, but then the viewer does not actually participate in solving the mystery. But if you give them less, and let them figure it out, they will be like “Aha!” and it’s immediately more engaging.

Regarding how it’s tied to BlackWeald, I usually try to make my musical output ambiguous enough that there is always some room where the listeners can project themselves into. Some riddles to be solved, some connections to make yourself, something hidden, stuff that is not so obvious. This is why the song titles on The Fermi Exhibit are a bit shady. “Civilizations might be too far away from each other” not only sounds shit, but leaves no room to figure out what the song represents.

Of course it does not apply to all BlackWeald releases, e.g. Leonov and She and the Devil’s Sons follow a specific narrative, but I think it applies well for most of the others. Maybe on the “From Dust..” album the ambiguity went a bit too far and without the additional text, the framework of the album might not get through (the analogy between the timeline of a day and the timeline of a life). But e.g. with Sedna I tried to approach it in a Lovecraftian way. You know what happened, you know what it is capable of, but it’s up to you to imagine what it actually might be.

Casey: Why did you decide to form The Fermi Exhibit in the style of a museum exhibit, and what do the different sections represent?

BlackWeald: In short, if someone would have put a pistol to my head saying “You have to cut the album down to 2 hours!”, I would have chosen the first 13 tracks of the album. Fortunately I don’t have to tailor my output to any restrictions.

As a longer story, I started working on this album almost 3 years ago, right after 666 Minutes in Hell. As it happens often to me, a seemingly quick project turned into a huge monster. In a few weeks I found myself having 2000+ sound fragments and about 30 song concepts. Shaping it into finished songs seemed impossible and the weight of the project felt unbearable. So first I thought I’d slice the work up and have it released in a series of EPs. Then I got caught in the flow and during months of never-ending sessions, I finished everything at once.

When I saw that it turned out to be 8 hours long, I started cutting the fat off several songs and even threw away complete songs. I narrowed it down to 2 hours, having like a “best of” version of all the composed material, but I started missing many of the leftover material. I found myself listening to the “B-sides” more than the rest, so I just said “fuck it” and decided to keep quite a few of them. Today, I still have my own favourites in the more experimental, longer, less “traditional ambient” tracks. All that remains of this back-and-forth hassle is those two lines regarding the first 13 tracks being the “main hall” and the rest existing on the “gallery annex” of the exhibition.

Oh, and why an exhibition? Most of the stuff I release has some kind of narrative going through the whole album, but this one is among the few that is “just a bunch of tracks without any connection between them”, except for, of course, the overarching theme of the Fermi Paradox. My brain felt that I still needed to give the album a frame, which is this virtual exhibition, where each track is like a painting hanging on the wall, representing one solution to the Fermi Paradox.

Casey: When talking to The Dungeon in Deep Space, you explained that your music is created in a no budget, lo-fi kind of way, using an old PC, only using the integrated sound-card etc. Is this still the case, and what do you think that this minimalistic style of creation does for your creativity? I do a similar thing myself but it’s mainly to avoid overwhelm, perfectionism, and my OCD kicking my backside up and down all day long.

BlackWeald: Yeah, it’s still pretty much the case, although my PC aged 2 additional years, so it’s now 12 years old. Makes video rendering take ages. Although I bought the cheapest Behringer soundcard, so guitars and vocals can be recorded slightly more easily, but there are neither of them on The Fermi Exhibit.

The “no budget” nature is by my circumstances, not by my will. I’d love to have a dedicated room full of instruments and synths, having a top tier computer, etc, but that’s not my reality. Still, if you want to, you actually can compose and release with minimal gear and finances. Anyone saying otherwise is fooling themselves. My first few releases were made without a DAW, using only Audacity. Of course the methods used limit what the outcome can become. But, it is what it is.

Most of my favourite artists made music this way anyways. Sure, Swans has top tier gear, experience and several human talents behind them, but Dylan Carlson makes music almost all by himself, often with a single guitar only. Similarly, Hate Forest is practically one guy writing the best riffs ever and uses a drum machine. If my own favourites are often just “a dude with a guitar”, why would I fool myself thinking that gear matters the most.

I myself tend to overthink stuff by nature, so I have to keep pushing myself to accept “It’s good enough, move on!”. But also, restrictions can spark up creativity, whether they are artificial or not. So anyone planning a compilation work, feel free to ping me, as I love these kinds of works!

***

Thanks so much to BlackWeald for his time spent answering my questions. If you would like to check out The Fermi Exhibit, you can find it on Bandcamp at this link. 

Dark Ambient: Shadowlands 4 Is Out Now!

 

Owl Ripper Recordings has just released a big slice of dark ambient and dungeon synth goodness: Shadowlands 4. I'm honoured to say that one of my own Reality Scruncher tracks, Breaching The Threshold, is nestling amongst the 19 other tracks it contains. Head over to Bandcamp to check it out. It's set to Name Your Price, which means you can even get it for free if you like.

Breaching The Threshold is from my Ennui and Terror in the Void album, and if you like the track, you might like to know that you can pick up any of my albums (or all of them) for 25% off until Sunday 12th Nov. Just enter "realityscrunched" at the Bandcamp checkout :).

Dark Ambient Review: Mørketsland

Review By Casey Douglass

The technological progress of the modern world is amazing, but it can also feel oh so feeble. Our days are filled with the tedious “Marimba” of iPhones and the steady beep-beep of drip-fed pseudo approval from strangers. When held up against the heady, tangible world that the Vikings lived in, the present day appears to be little more than the cellophane wrapper on some tasty roasted boar meat that’s about to be offered to the Nordic gods. Mørketsland is a dark ambient album from ProtoU & Oljus, one that tears through the cellophane with its teeth.

Mørketsland contains echoing ritual drum beats, deep drones and eerie spirit-laced echoes that seem to bounce around a harsh, weather-swept landscape. Wind howls and swells, rain patters and drips, and distant thunder rumbles ominously in a pleasing, distant way. Every track of Mørketsland is a darkness-bathed, drum-fuelled homage to the Vikings, with the rites and chants being enacted by the voices almost certainly finding their way to the gods that they hope are listening.

I think that Spirits of the Water is probably my favourite of the seven tracks on the album. It begins with a low, slightly vibrating drone. A bell-like chime agitates the soundscape and a low chant begins. A slow echoing drumbeat is there also, and some strange little bird-like tweets. What sounds like distant thunder cracks in the distance, a ghostly vocal insinuating itself shortly after. Later, there are impressions of wind and waves, strange intonations, and as the drumbeat intensifies, a very deep vibrating tone. For me, this track felt like it was depicting a longboat out on open water, a moonlit fog enshrouding everything except the immediate blackness of the waves.

Wall of Thorns (ft Ager Sonus) is another track that really got my attention. It opens with low echoing drumbeats in a howling airy soundscape, the scratchy pattering of rain filling the ears with threat. There are rustles and creaks, and these are soon joined by a plucked melody and morose pipe notes. The soundscape slowly ratchets up into increasingly booming drum beats and ever busier howls, cries and swells of wind. The plucked melody, taken with the other elements of the track, gave me Witcher 3 or Game of Thrones flashbacks, which is a fun thing to return to.

All of the tracks of Mørketsland transport the listener into dark primal soundscapes, the kind of space in which the ritual drumbeats lend a trance-like energy to the swirling chaos and hardness of the landscapes hinted at. If you like your dark ambient to give you the impression of sitting in the firelight while the ever darkening shadows beyond its limits press every inwards, you might want to check out this album.

Visit the Mørketsland page on Bandcamp for more information. You can also check out the Spirits of the Water video below:

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Mørketsland

Album Artist: ProtoU & Oljus

Label: Cryo Chamber

Released: May 2, 2023