Posts Tagged ‘dark ambient’
It’s already dark and already cold. On my way home I bundle up, wrap my ears in headphones, and cover my head with a hood. Wind is trying to penetrate my sonic shell, but I got a stronger wind inside. Jannick Schou creates torrents of sound capable of silencing the gust. A strong tempest is growing [...]
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Tags: dark ambient, drone, noise
Take a deep breath, press play, and lower the needle. Here’s what happens next. Multiple layers split the frequency spectrum, your own being, and the perceived reality as everything in sight is enveloped in sound. The lowest register appears in the foreground, with deep rumbling bass defining the rhythm and structure. The highs swim below [...]
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Tags: ambient, dark ambient, noise
It’s true… I wait until the sun goes down to listen to the second release from Black Swan. I listen to the music the way others watch the movies. Lounging comfortably in my chair, positioned perfectly between my studio monitors, their cones facing towards me, slightly tilted, completing an imaginary triangle. A glass of wine in [...]
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Tags: ambient, dark ambient, drone, experimental
Taking the particular route of icy, semi-aquatic landscapes and a borderline-religious respect for nature’s power and fragility in the wider context of one’s ambient music can be a risky thing to do. Fairly often it can come off seeming a bit cheesy somehow, like the artist has thought for a few seconds that their work [...]
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Tags: ambient, dark ambient
For its fourth catalog release on Ian Hawgood’s Nomadic Kids Republic label, scratching strings and menacing piano chords come crashing down upon twisting, breathing, and howling nightmare of Haruki. On Falling, a Ghent-based (Belgium) sound artist Boris Snauwaert, recording under the pseudonym of Japanese sounding Haruki [makes me think of Murakami, as I'm reading one [...]
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Tags: dark ambient
If you haven’t been properly spooked by the previously reviewed Grimoire from Kreng, well perhaps this little gem will do the trick. At times borderline creepy, the hair-raising screeching howls of Kaboom Karavan convey an atmosphere already painted on its cover (courtesy of the label’s head, Erik K Skodvin): an unidentifiable feathered being, with a [...]
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Tags: cinematic, dark ambient
Hauntology… No, not an idea of Derrida’s within philosophy of history, but more of a state of mind induced by this music, deserving its own special name. More than an eerie feeling evoked by the sound, but rather the sound itself, rising from within the ashes of burned memories and dreams. The music comes from [...]
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Tags: ambient, dark ambient, modern classical
Here’s another great album that I’ve been meaning to tell you about for awhile. I suppose it’s been a whole year since I originally heard Along The Corridors, and then, the release made it to Headphone Commute’s Best of 2010 : Music For Synergizing The Synapse Of Ideas, so it’s only appropriate that appears on these [...]
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Tags: dark ambient, dark idm, idm
This vinyl only mix by Optic Echo‘s founder Mike Jedlicka was formulated to represent where the light and dark meet at the first flicker of dawn. You’ve been awake all night with a feeling of a constant undertow pulling the world away, a premonition of something unknown to come. A vague hallucination of old memories and new dreams [...]
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Tags: ambient, dark ambient, electronica
Welcome to another exclusive mix from Headphone Commute… On this first day of November we bring you a gorgeous journey into the subconscious mind of Subheim. Both, uplifting and dark, this musical exploration, will take you into other worlds, real and imagined. It’s always nearly impossible to describe the music featured by our podcast contributors [...]
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Tags: cinematic, dark ambient, dark idm
Thomas Pijols, aka Nebulo, is back with a brand new album on the beloved Hymen out on September 10th! And you get to hear the album teaser here, on Headphone Commute! Fifteen dark and glitchy tracks, a staple sound for this German label, will excite your neurons and awake the spirit of archaic subconscious. Here’s [...]
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Tags: dark ambient, dark idm
Paying homage to Brian Eno‘s ambient masterpiece, Music for Airports (Polydor, 1978), which Eno created for the whole purpose of being played in actual airports, to convey calmness and reassurance to the passengers about to set off on an airborne journey, The Black Dog set out to create their own version, designed for real airports. [...]
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Tags: dark ambient, experimental, techno
Proem doesn’t waste any time in setting the scene on Till There’s No Breath. On opening track These Are Demands, it’s as if there is a massive space ship descending from the sky, metal screeching and thrusters on full blast as it lands right in front of you. There are echoes of distorted alien-sounding voices [...]
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Tags: dark ambient
I am way overdue to give this album a proper review. I first heard The Versailles Sessions back at the end of 2008, when this Leaf release immediately made it on to my Best of 2008 list. Then, as time flew by, I was expecting to cover the upcoming release, Océano. The latter is expected [...]
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Tags: dark ambient, modern classical
This flashback is supposed to be another installmanet of my Random Vinyl of the Week series. But I’m already cheating… A little bit… I did indeed pull out this triple twelve-incher from my vast record library (the correct term is discothèque, right?). But it is still shrink wrapped! You can’t expect me to break the [...]
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Tags: dark ambient, minimal techno
This is obviously an amazing record to start off my Random Vinyl of the Week adventure, as I dig through my dusty archives. Released in 1996, Dead Cities was Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans’ fourth full length album as The Future Sound of London. Dead Cities was that very last record and then there was [...]
Filed under: Album Reviews, Flashbacks | 2 Comments
Tags: dark ambient, downtempo, electronica
Lock all the doors and walk up the stairs. Turn down the lights and slightly raise the volume. Breathe slowly and try not to wet your pants. The boards creek somewhere in the attic. Lustmord enters the house. With deep moans, low drones, and bass rumbles, the walls begin to ooze evil, and if you [...]
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Tags: cinematic, dark ambient
Hecq – Night Falls (Hymen)
As I turn my attention from ethereal to dark ambient, it is only appropriate that I cover the latest album from one of my all time favorite artists, Hecq. Last year, I already hailed Ben Lukas Boysen’s double disk release, titled 0000, as one of the Best of 2007 albums. It perfectly aligned along my [...]
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Tags: dark ambient, modern classical
I first came across Tympanik Audio, a Chicago based label with the dark electronic roster, late in 2007, with their first double compilation release, Emerging Organisms. In the first months of 2008, I reviewed an intelligent rhythmic industrial album by Totakeke, ELekatota. But with this fourth catalog release, I can shamelessly proclaim that Tympanik has [...]
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Tags: cinematic, dark ambient, idm
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