Visions Of Darkness (In Iranian Contemporary Music) Label: Cold Spring – CSR242CD Format: 2 × CD, Album, Compilation Country: UK Released: 25 Sep 2017 Style: Dark Ambient, Drone, Experimental, Noise
The simurgh is depicted in Iranian art as a winged creature in the shape of a bird, gigantic enough to carry off an elephant or a whale. It appears as a peacock with the head of a dog and the claws of a lion, sometimes however, also with a human face. Iranian legends consider the bird so old that it had seen the destruction of the world three times over. The simurgh learned so much by living so long that it is thought to possess the knowledge of all the ages. We hope this mythological benevolent creature could be a hope and a a guide in our dark times.
Shock Frontier – Tumult Label: Malignant Records – TumorCD110 Format: CD, Album Country: US Released: 01 Dec 2017 Style: Industrial, Dark Ambient, Noise
With his dark ambient project Apócrýphos, Robert Kozletsky has shown a proven ability at creating multi-layered and highly detailed soundscapes. Working as a duo alongside Kyle Carney, he takes that skill and applies it to his death industrial alter-ego, Shock Frontier, carving out a sound residing somewhere between the “new wave” of American power electronics (The Vomit Arsonist, Steel Hook Prostheses) and the classic sound of Cold Meat Industry (Deutsch Nepal, Megaptera). “Tumult” is a world enveloped in a perpetual haze of post-apocalyptic soot and radioactive ash, where deadening percussion, reverberating factory drones, samples, and atmospheric washes of hostile electronics churn and whir into a polluted, endless expanse. The follow up to 2013’s debut Mancuerda Confessions, Tumult is a more intricate, more oppressive, and more finely honed release, and a logical extension of the Shock Frontier sound. Featuring contributions from Gnawed, Kristoffer Oustad, and Noculture, in 6 panel DVD digipak skillfully designed by Chris Angelucci of NTF Design & Print.
Hiemis – Nachtstücke Label: Gradual Hate Records – GH04 MP3 Format: Digital Country: Spain Released: 2018 Style: Drone, Dark Ambient, Esoteric Ambient
Nachtstücke is a tribute to the world of the paranormal, especially to the mesmerism that permeated the exalted work of E.T.A. Hoffmann. Hoffmann was not only a man of letters, but also a musician and a painter. During his lifetime, he published many stories, some later profoundly influencing Poe. We could mention ‘The Devil’s Elixirs’, ‘The Sandman’, and «Vampirismus». History, technique and style are the tools to create a masterpiece, which the author uses to create chilling, dramatic and deep stories where many of the innovative ideas are anticipated, from which many writers and musicians would be nurtured, including Strauss at Elektra .
The environments are gloomy. The night, the silence, the inexplicable forces of nature serve as a resource to accentuate the horror. The outcome, like any good story, leaves a doubt about death and madness, since both serve as an appetizer to a constant engine: fear. As Adolfo Bioy Casares would say «old as fear, fantastic fictions come before letters».
«Nachtstücke» is a look at that universe where disturbing characters live that become oracles, supposedly trivial images that contain a mystery, as well as threatening inventions that never cease to amaze us. Thus, dreams, magnetism, telekinesis, sleepwalking, hunches, premonition, and telepathy compose the stuff of this disturbing reality. That parallel world in which we all live, and it is made of chance, intuitions, fears, mysteries. . . Hoffmann explored, in everyday life, that hidden reality that can be guessed in dreams, visions, ghosts, funeral stories, scientific machinations. In short, a world full of strange and mysterious forces, which are capable of playing with the life and illusions of all of us.
