News and reviews on all macabre melodies: Metal in its many manifestations, dark and synthwave, audio dramas, soundtracks, ambient, and dungeon synth.
A delicate weaving of field recordings and manipulated electronics are used interchangeably, as the songs gently evolve into each other, the former coalescing to the latter, all while sitting on atonal beds of ambient warmth, signature flourishes from ProtoU.
Read MoreAtrementia is yet another deft display of Robert Koletsky’s mastery over analog soundscapes, and is an excellent mood-piece of atmosphere...
Read MoreThis is the music of pure, unmotivated relaxation, of respite in a world that relentlessly pummels its survivors in a deluge of the mundane, and I am thankful every time I listen to the music of Cesare and the comfort and relaxation it brings.
Read MoreThese compositions deftly weave between evoking emotions of mystery and even awe - the wonder and undoubted trepidation that a human would feel in the presence of a god, but again, merely acting as pylon, while organic instrumentation rides atop.
Read MoreMusically, this is a relaxed, neo-jazz ambient excursion into atmospheric palates - never once does this album try to take center stage in the mind of the listener, but rather, it is meant to be played in the periphery of the imagination, allowing the mind to wander to the neon-ridden gloom of this darkly-envisioned Las Vegas.
Read MoreBeginning with languid chantings and laced with eerie, undulating pads, Phantasmora immediately conjures the imagery of a desultory Charles Dickens or Charlotte Brontë setting, filtered in a perpetual grey lens, all while our mind wanders into a home, tinged in bister and beige, tudor-crown finished, yet with intricate coils of wiring and machineries of esoteric purpose lining the walls… this is the music of forbidden paranormal practice…
Read MoreThese songs exactly personify the feelings of purposeless wandering. Soaked in reverb, these benign chordings offer serenity, and at no point is there a feeling of any impetus in the progression of the tracks. This is the perfect soundtrack for one who has shirked their mortal bond, and now finds themselves standing in a ghostly, empty shell of this corporeal reality.
Read MoreUgasanie returns with a new, ice-hewn Cosmic Horror droning un travail exemplaire, Cold World Eternity. This is a chilling foray into the frigid, unforgiving North, and the ancient mysteries and stark realities that become unfurled and discovered through exploration. The oblique narrative is just as open-ended and vague as the music contained within, with only the faintest touches of crystalline at the edges of periphery to elucidate the listener engaging in this journey to the far wastelands.
Read MoreSubtlety and nuance is a penchant for Caldon Glover, and Metrophagy embraces said methodology with gusto, presenting vistas of flesh entwined with wire… as growing pads and thrums of circuit-bent analog pads swell and ebb, punctuated by stabs and strikes of unknown mechanical percussives.
Read MoreThe concept of the album alone is enough to attract sci-fi music fans, but musically, this soundtrack feels akin to the likes of a darker, moodier Vangelis, and at times a languorous Mick Gordon, producing a grand soundscape that combines flesh and circuit.
Read MoreThere are subtleties to the languorous, tonal directions this album takes, each transition softly flowing into the next refrain, evoking the feeling of being lost in an empty world.
Read MoreEach track of the album weaves a tapestry of soundscapes, evoking both unsettling and calming emotions, sometimes, though, even hinting at eldritch presences, providing a touch of the uncertain - a tremulous dread that is unavoidable when contemplating the vast emptiness of outer space…
Read MoreRich in detail and texture, with subtle variations and layers that reveal themselves with repeated listens, this album once again displays a natural chemistry of sound which the two acts compliment between each other.
Read MoreInterdimensional continues this tradition of intricate sound design, delivering a slow, methodical fresco of subtle drones and gentle uses of harmonic textures - creating an aural blanket of gentle mesmerism, a unique quality to the “space” ambient feel of which Alphaxone is deft at crafting
Read MoreDronny Darko and ProtoU are masters at taking their time with a sonic landscape, quietly filling voids in the transom with delicate flourishes of pads and intricate filigrees of soft winds and gentle, inflective tones that even mimic percussion; this is an album for quiet contemplation
Read MoreThe music creates a vivid sonic landscape that evokes the sci-fi atmosphere and the temporal distortions of the story, furthering the feeling of this being a soundtrack to a movie playing in the imagination, and this is among my personal favorite qualities of albums on Cryo Chamber.
Read MoreThe music is the brilliance of Dead Melodies come to the fore, with reserved pads, delicate plucks in cadenced patterns, all slowly evolved to be a blanketing soundscape for the listener to enjoy the soundtrack while their imagination explores the storyline of the album.
Read MoreThe use of modular synthesis gives the music a warm and organic feel, while also adding complexity and unpredictability, an underlying circuitry to the pads and evolving textures that seamlessly weave throughout the music. The scope and breadth of the shifting tracks create a film in the mind’s eye, which is precisely what albums of this type are meant to do, and the film created by this album is rife with sci fi elegance and dark grandeur.
Read MoreKnown for his ability to craft otherworldly atmospheres, Metatron Omega delves even deeper into the concepts of theological and interpersonal inference, mixed with the timbre of abyssal and cosmic aesthetics with Kataphasis.
Read MoreThese tracks are an amalgamation of ambient texture, orchestral prose at times, and even Berlin school stylings - reminiscent of Klaus Schulze - while at the same time maintaining its cinematic ambience and soundtrack feel.
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