This is the first installment of Frozen In Time: Weekly News! This section will have a weekly update on all things related to dark ambient and anything else deemed relevant to dark ambient listeners. If you have some news to share, please get in touch at info@thisisdarkness.com For all the readers, any feedback would be very helpful and could potentially help to change the site for the better. Thanks! Enjoy!
Concert Coverage
The Phobos Festival recently took place. Phobos is an annual festival coordinated by Martin Stürtzer of Phelios and Sphäre Sechs. All this year’s performances have been captured on video in their entirety. Check them out:
S.E.T.I.
Cities Last Broadcast
Treha Sektori
Cent Ans De Solitude Live at Phobos
New Releases and Pre-orders
AFFECTVS & Lamia Culta – Teaser for new album released.
Preorders for Blessing From The Darkness [Opus 2] will begin on March 21st.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CZ4w-eS70s
Anemone Tube – Pre-orders have begun for the new album.
In The Vortex of Dionysian Reality will be the first release on March 25th from the new label Blossoming Fern! Blossoming Fern says about the album, “Related to Nietzsche`s notion of the Wagnerian music drama as a revelation of the abysmal truth about man, In the Vortex of Dionysian Reality allures us into the Dionysian dreamland, where tragedy reigns, in pursuit of the ultimate oneness. With its washes of noise and layers of piercing feedback on a sub-base of wavering synths, it is a maelstrom of sound generating a hallucinatory reality. The atmosphere oscillates between destructiveness and aggravating frenzy, between the archaic and the sacral, between frenzied passion and abyssal melancholy, serving the mythical experience of music in a world where language has failed as a method of communication and music figures as the primordial form of expression.
As he considers humanities to have reached their limit, young Nietzsche hopes to find ultimate spiritualization and idealization in the reborn myth. Music alone (“our German masters”), as the primeval form of poetry and revelation of true Dionysian wisdom, may achieve triumph over the Apollonian shallow world of apparition.
With his timely musical rendition of mythical experience as In the Vortex of Dionysian Reality, Anemone Tube conveys an emotionally and mentally charged album which reveals his soft spot for progressive post rock metal acts like Amusement Parks On Fire, Blut Aus Nord or O.L.D. Their special approach of dreamy melodies vs. atonal, discordant sounds is skillfully recreated through polyphonic synths lines, which are then modulated into feedback and added for good measure.
Carrying the same title as the 2015 cassette EP release on The Epicurean, this CD with its 40+ minutes total length and five all new, yet unreleased tracks is less a mere re-release, but rather a full stand-alone album, featuring Ukrainian dark ambient artist Monocube on one track, as well as including sounds by Russian avantgardists Post Scriptvm and sound processing by French sound artist Pacific 231. ”
Dødsmaskin – new album available for pre-order.
The debut album is set for release on March 24th. Malignant Records says about the release, “The physical debut for Norway’s Dødsmaskin, Fullstendig Brent («completely burnt»; «holocaust») is a meticulously crafted effort that presents to the listener a sonic interpretation of one of the darkest chapters in Norwegian history, namely the witch trials that took place in the country’s northernmost regions during the 17th century. Assembled constructs that incorporate field recordings, drones, atonal melodies and clusters of distortion and searing noise, Dødsmaskin transcends all genre classification, pushing boundaries while deftly navigating through a spectrum of post-industrial soundscapes. Tracks can and often start quietly and introspectively, then build to explosive climaxes of unbridled tension and razor sharp intensity, with dense pneumatic blasts intersecting with caustic frequencies and mechanized throb. It’s that kind of unpredictability, attention to detail, and forward-thinking craftsmanship that’ll have you thinking Kevin Drumm one minute, and STROM.ec or Propergol the next, and what makes Dødsmaskin such a vital new entry to the Malignant roster. Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri of Black Knoll Studio, N.Y.
Northumbria – pre-orders are available for the new album.
Releasing on Cryo Chamber on March 21st, they say about the album, “Markland is the second album in Northumbria’s trilogy inspired by the Norse discovery of Canada.
As you set foot in Markland, the salty mist of the ocean gives way, swirling around your heavy boots as they crunch on the rocks. Unexplored land left untouched. The wind screams around the mountaintops and something echoes in the distance. You make your way across the steep mountain pass, your eyes water as the weather turns harsher with each step. From atop the cliffs you kneel in awe at the primordial alien landscape stretching on and on. Your trembling hand covers the yellow hazy sun as you spot wild shadows dancing in the dark forest below. A sickly thunderous roar builds from deep within the earth turning day into night, what is this place?
Using only guitar and bass, and recording their improvised compositions live, Jim Field and Dorian Williamson create a deep textured sound world. Evoking the ancient wonder that the Norse explorers must have felt discovering Markland, the land of the Forests. ”
Sadistic Cult releases new album.
LVC1F3R is a dark and gritty album which crosses the lines between dark ambient, ritual ambient, and death industrial.
Sombre Soniks – releases new compilation.
Sombre Soniks says about the release, “Thirteenth in thee series of bi-annual kompilations presenting 23 Dark Ambient kompositions, now entering its seventh year! This time thee participants were asked to kreate something that was thirteen minutes long and featured ‘thirteen’ within thee title of thee komposition… Also inkluded are thee 23 info kards with individual bakground art kreated by P23, using manipulations of a photo of a Willow tree (a symbol of rebirth & renewal), and kover artwork by Fabian van der Meer!”
Unexplained Sounds Group – sub-label Eighth Tower Records releases The Great Architect.
About the album, Eighth Tower Records says, “Gnostic tradition boils down to the notion of a God creator as a malicious being, an evil Demiurge responsible for the creation of existence. It follows that all material existence is evil, and this accounts for the anticosmism in Gnosticism. According to a number of Gnostic traditions, and later in Manichean theology, an extra-worldly supreme deity existed above the inferior creator God. Much like Plato’s Demiurge in the Timaeus, the creator did not create matter ex nihilo, out of nothing, because matter was already present. The Demiurge merely re-formed it to his purposes, and imprisoned souls from the higher planes of reality in the corporeal forms of human beings.
Valanx – Pre-orders now available for new album.
Valanx is Arne Weinberg’s main project and makes its debut on Cromlech Records with this 40 minute tape release. Radiant Orbs of Abzu consists of two 20 minute pieces of abstract experimentalism, drone constructs and dark ambient atmospheres. Both tracks are intertwined and form one long complete composition that is best experienced in one listening session. The two segments have been created as a sonic adulation to Absu, the Sumerian god of fresh water of the world. Absu (or Abzu) is also a reference to the primeval sea below the void space of the underworld and the earth above.
Available April 10th as a limited tape release (incl. digital download) and digital release.
Other News
Father Dagon – Trailer released for the Lovecraft inspired serial fiction podcast.
You can listen on YouTube, SoundCloud, or Libsyn. Search for Father Dagon or Dread Falls Theatre. The full episodes come out every other Monday from April 3rd.
Weekly Specials
Deep Audio – Weekly Special
Herbst9 Usumgal Kalamma 2CD Box
http://www.deep-audio.de
Reverse Alignments – Weekly Special
This week you have the possibility to obtain Skare Grader digital edition for a discount of 40%. Find the release here:
https://reversealignment.bandcamp.com/album/grader
Use code “gbgfly76” when checking out to obtain the discount.
Expires 24th March.
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