Genre: Dark Ambient
Rating: 5/5
released on bandcamp July 20, 2021
This is a compilation of ambient music that I might call Dusk Ambient instead of Dark Ambient because it avoids the cliches and trappings of most of the Dark Ambient releases from the last, maybe, three or four years. The bandcamp notes suggest that this is a coherent compilation and it really is. It’s a fantastic musical family. I always copy and paste the titles on bandcamp releases so if the title seems odd treat it like erectile dysfunction. I don’t even know why I wrote that. In real life, just enough of my jokes land to keep me at it.
The first two tracks are by Planning for Burial. The first track opens the compilation with kindness making you feel like you want to feel and letting you know you’re in the company of a musician with the skill to achieve such a goal. Then in the second track the tape stretches and the song warps and ultimately implodes. And I mean that in a very good way. It structurally falls in on itself as if the instrumental track is strangling the what sounds like to me the vocal track. It reminds us that music is not fundamentally a utilitarian art.
Bosse-de-Nage performing under the name Bryan Manning plays third. I figure their closest brush with the music skies of fame is their association with Deafheaven. The track, Heater, is an interesting metallic sounding track. Fuck me if I know what kind of metal I’m talking about but think Lou Reed not Metallica and don’t think about Lulu at all.
The fourth track is by Drowse and it’s that rug in The Big Lebowski, it ties the room together. Musically, I think it’s fair to say it’s reminiscent of early Tangerine Dream and captures that ‘vastness of space’ sound very well. The final three minutes or so are really beautiful with the vocals evoking the supernatural.
Jonathan Tuite closes down the record with the final two tracks. They borrow more from second half twentieth century early pioneers. There’s hints of both Stockhausen and Penderecki. However, it’s not of that time. It’s ambient music in the twenty-first century sense.
This is a very musically sound and satisfying record.
Warmth Highest 