Because I am not a fan of brash, hyper-dramatic, thematically drowned dark ambient, Triangular Ascension (Federico Ágreda Álvarez) almost lost me early on in his new release, The Chronos Anomaly. Good thing, then, that my gig here is to hang in there and see what else a disc has to offer. And by “good thing,” I mean good thing for me, because The Chronos Anomaly begins as one type of disc, but evolves to become something better. Álvarez creeps in at the start of the first track,”Time Crystal,” creating a haunted, sparse space dotted with the near-tribal overtones, including a growling didgeridoo, that play a stronger part later in the disc. But then it’s time to bomb the thing with huge symphonic bursts and lay in tortured moans and cries to fill in the background and make me worry that I’ve come across a pretty standard dark ambient disc. And yet, as soon as the disc moves into “Industry of Silence,” things are different. Cave-drip ambient gives itself over to a cool beat cross-bred with industrial clamor and maybe even a slight glimmer of post-rock structure. (He revisits this feel, in even gritter, more hardcore fashion, on the grinding and aggressive “End of Time.”) This is not the bombast I was greeted with; this is almost subtle in execution, more sophisticated in its approach, and suddenly I’m along for the ride. Álvarez wends through a couple different sound zones as he goes, from dark and abstract (“Dream Devourer,” “The Future Code”) to that edge-of-tribal tone (“Carpe Noctem,” “Above the Remnants”). Because of my own musical predilections, this is my favorite stretch of the disc. In “Carpe Noctem” Álvarez lays down an earthy bass drone, adds bird and atmospheric sounds, and drives the pieces forward with percussion, eventually taking the listener into sparse, echoing depths and cold atmospheres. The Chronos Anomaly rises back upward on the thickly packed but lightened pads of “The Cleansing.” The closing track, “Final Movement,” surprises with an almost New Age feel, starting with more of those here-comes-the-dawn pads, which give way to a bit of stormy weather, before unfolding into a melody with tapped percussion and Spanish guitar. (I guess when you’ve made it through the darkness, you flamenco a bit.) A very cool way to end.

The more I have listened to The Chronos Anomaly, the more I’ve found to enjoy. Álvarez is at his best when he keeps away from the bombast and works with stripped-back and densely layered sound. There’s a lot of potent emotion at work in these flows. The darkest stuff is suitably unsettling, leaving you stranded in a churn of near-noise. Admittedly, I skip over the first track when I listen now; I feel it’s the weakest part of the disc because it tries too hard to set the scene. It’s in subtlety that this work finds its strength. The Chronos Anomaly is well worth listening to, particularly for dark ambient fans.

Available from Cyclic Law.

Released in 2012, Perry Frank’s Music to Disappear is a collection of songs the composer posted to various sites (YouTube, Soundcloud, etc.) in 2011. These pieces range from pleasant New Age songs to interesting electronic-music excursions with an ambient feel, with a bit of straight-up post-rock in the mix. This, particularly with some tracks being stronger than others, can make it a bit of a mixed bag on a start-to-finish listen, but Frank’s range of talent extends equally across his styles, so as part of a shuffled mix or even shuffled on its own, Music to Disappear can really shine. You’ll come across “Landscape of A Twilight Lamp,” which carries a little echo of Steven Halpern in its keyboard structures, but mixes in an interesting depth of background sound. It feels like a sad song interspersed with echoes of memory. Very moving.  Its followup, “Song for the Afternoon,” pairs a Windham Hill-type guitar song over coursing synth backdrops. On “Another Place Another Time,” Frank opens with acoustic guitar, adds in other instruments to build to a romantic swell, then hands it off to piano. There’s a long pause mid-track, and it comes back in a more ambient form, quiet pads and long organ chords, once again building back to reprise the melody, with a little extra swagger. New Age fans will eat this one up. For pure fun, there’s the considerable charm of the folk dance that is “The Ballad of the Late Clock,” overflowing with Mediterranean flair. (I felt like shouting “Opa!” once or twice.) “CandleLight” is the rocker here, a song I can’t get enough of. It’s packed with power-pop guitar and wears its hooks on it sleeve. Once it gets going, it’s just flat-out energetic and comes to a great close. The biggest surprise here is the closing track, “Pleiades Star Cluster,” a spacey (obviously) and somewhat ambient piece that begins as a whisper, drifting on pads and what sounds like more field recordings. Late in the track it changes gears; Frank drops in an almost dubstep-type beat (I’m reminded of AWOL Nation’s “Sail”), and a wobbling melody ushers the ride home. Guitars and high chords offer up a borderline-Floyd kind of feel as it powers to its endpoint. Certainly the best track here.

Variety is the spice of Music to Disappear, and Frank’s ability to hit all his styles well puts a lot of promise on future, perhaps more focused releases. For now, I’m content to shuffle this one into my mix and see what Perry Frank serves up to me next.

Available from IdealMusik.

This brief four-track from Giulio Alidinucci, who also records as Obsil, is meant to showcase the composer’s electro-acoustic work. To that end, he  employs various sound sources, including pipe organ, Mellotron, synth pads, and field recordings, which he then manipulates. The result is work that stays on the quieter side, but shows a lot of diverse texture. Three of the four tracks are quick hits, the longest, “Aria,”  running just five minutes. That piece floats quietly, using the pipe organ as its starting point, drawing a simple and soft line from start to finish. That feeling, unfortunately, is marred by the extremely abrupt start to the second track, “Satellite.” It feels like a bad edit that got left in the final product, and it sounds amateurish. Otherwise, its wavering tones and sprinklings of piano notes and other wayward sounds make for an interesting, nicely textured few minutes. “Short Circuit” opens with the sounds of walking in the woods, the crunch of leaves underfoot, and wends its way into rich, watery tones. Pads and light touches of piano add to the backdrop. Toward the end of this piece, Aldinucci plays with cutting out the sound in spots, which, to me, distracts from the flow of the thing. I’m sure it’s a conscious choice, but it feels like an error. The closer, “R’n’R Through Broken Headphones,” builds up from a long drone. The sources here are synth and field recordings, but processed heavily into dense structures. Aldinucci adds subtle textures and rhythm beneath them, then builds those to more overt manipulations. I like the way he ramps up the intensity on this, just to strip it back coming into the final minutes, paring back until we’re left with the field recordings, like a return to the real world. For an offering that rolls in at under half an hour, Archipelago packs in a lot of intent and effect. Well worth checking out.

Available from Other Electricities.

With a hefty hand on the thematic tiller, Worms of the Earth launches into the ritualistic and arcane work, Azal’ucel. Falling between dark ambient and industrial, and laced throughout with chants “delivering rites in foreign tongues,” the disc delivers a ton of atmosphere and varies enough throughout to keep it from stagnating as just another dark ambient work. I’ll admit that I rolled my eyes a bit upon first seeing track titles such as “Wandering Cadaverous Fields Toward the Citadel at Topheth” and “A Pestilent Fog Descends Upon the Empyreal Throne,” but looking past that and diving into the sounds and feelings here and letting myself be taken along with the sonic narrative, I quickly understood that there’s substance behind the bombast and a lot to dig into. The theme descends right from the start, with “Disgraced at the Foot of the Throne of God” throwing windy drones and rattling chains at you while the first chant soars with sacred energy behind it. It’s a nice balance of density and lightness, and it gains more power and presence when heavy drum beats thunder into the mix. That’s largely the equation at work here–big, shadowy drones and pads, lots of small background sounds, aggressive drums, and the chanting, which ranges from the high cries of the female voices to a threatening, throaty sound from the males. The gentlemen are at their best on the grinding, densely packed “Fork-Tongued Priests at Black Gehanna Again Speak My Name,” where their Gregorian-sounding intonations harmonize with deep-bass synth and hover over layers of industrial clatter that wander around your headspace. This track also exemplifies the range at play here, as mid-track, quite unexpectedly, a light melodic line slots into place. Well, before it gets eaten alive by more of the grind, that is. Even more mold-breaking is “Of Statues And The Sacred Gardens,” a straightforward melodic piece that slowly balances off with a rising wash of sound. The EM beat is refreshing after all the weightier sounds. The disc comes around with the final track, “Tearing Down the Christian Pantheon,” opening with funereal chords and breaking into uptempo–but no less thunderous–percussion. The female chants re-enter, uplifting and cleansing.

Azal’ucel surprised me, quite frankly. I was ready for it to be all grind and ponderosity, and instead I encountered an engaging and effective suite of work that carries its intention perfectly. It’s varied enough that it doesn’t wear thin, knows when to lay off the weight, and neatly walks the line of dark and not-quite-dark. A great experience in sonic storytelling, and a ritual I will gladly be a part of again.

Available from Industry Eight.

Chris Russell turns toward the dark side and gets sonically spare on his deep new release, Portal. This is another release I’d put more in the grey ambient category rather than flat-out dark. It’s got its fair share of it, doled out in groaning bass pads and tortured electronics, but Russell also infuses it with a lot of breadth, a lot of openness that sets it apart from its more cloying cousin, isolationist ambient. It feels like exploring dark physical spaces as opposed to grim mental states A track like “Dolmen” takes it power from its geological movement and simple interaction of pads. With it slow pace, it pulls the listener in and down without any real edges to disturb the flow. The opening track, “Abyss,” takes a similar route but does carry a bit of sonic serration, nice gritty textures around the edges and sound-warbles that ramp up the dark sensibility. Russell tempers his flow in spots with percussive elements that have a muted industrial clamor to them. Listen to “Enceladus,” where that sound clatters and reverberates against sparse, haunted sounds and wavering tremolo winds. “Outlands” is full of sudden sounds, from chimes to snarls to rattles. Russell paints a rich picture here of some abandoned somewhere that has retained its share of ghosts, a place you know you probably shouldn’t be but can’t move away from. Portal is one of those discs that has the power to soothe while it unsettles–not that the unsettling aspect is all that pronounced. But it’s there in touches of dissonance and the urgings of the low end, and it gets to you. Yet it’s never something you consciously fight against. The disc’s landscape is much too engaging for that. This is a definite headphone listen; Russell is playing with a lot of small sounds to texture his strong flows. So get the phones on, settle in, and drop into Portal.

Available from Relaxed Machinery.

Given that the recording of The Separate Ones, the debut full-length release from Eyes Cast Down, took place over seven years of part-time work, it’s no wonder that the finished product comes off as very intimate and personal. Surprisingly, considering its spread-out pedigree, it also manages to feel like a sensible, continuous narrative. Through six tracks, composer Gregg Moorcroft moves his work from warm, straightforward guitar ambient to fever-dream ruminations graced with Sanskrit chant. The journey runs, by turns, from calming to halluncinatory, but keeps the listener engaged throughout. Starting as it does with the quiet ambient structures of “First Day Apart,” it would be easy to dismiss this within the first five minutes as simply that–quiet ambient. As much as I enjoy the rich guitar tones here, it’s when Moorcroft begins imbuing the work with more texture and drama that things get even more interesting. “Rebuild from Memory” retains the sighing notes at first, with Moorcroft rippling their surface with wavering treatments. It’s a very classic sound, broad and calming. “Knife of Karma” glides in on rich waveform pads, then adds a metallic clatter, creating moments of percussion that come and go. Mid-track it turns slightly toward a dissonant feel, like shadows falling across the sound. Sharp guitar notes cleave through the mix. Echoing, chanting vocals from singer Alannah drive “Expanse of Heart.” There’s a wonderful, gut-shaking bass chord that comes and goes throughout the piece, a great counter to the skyward-reaching vocals. And then there is the centerpiece here, “Like A Riven Cloud,” a piece composed of improvised parts, used as a conduit for Moorcroft’s feelings about a friend’s suicide. This is a bared-soul piece of work, extremely vulnerable, with the feel of an unsettled dream. Moorcroft’s wife Dasi recites part of a Sanksrit prayer for protection in the middle of a scattered wash of sounds, and the raw sadness in her voice, at times sounding quite on the verge of tears, cuts straight into you. Violin from Ezra Azmon–whom Moorcroft found busking on the street in Toronto–cries and calls from the distance and adds a fiery anger in spots. At 21 minutes, this is a long time to spend washed over with someone else’s potent emotions, and it’s hard not to come away a little changed from the experience. The disc ends with “Radha’s Tears,” pairing a solo processed guitar with vocals from Dasi. The guitar sounds swirl and resonate, and I find it interesting that the vocals come off as the sharper element here, not interruptive, but at times almost boldly challenging the instrument.

Quite honestly, I struggled to find words for this review. I have probably listened to this disc more than 20 times in the past couple of weeks, and it has lost none of its potency for the repetition. While all music is personal at its core, The Separate Ones stands out for the extreme intimacy it conveys and the remarkable depth of effect it carries. It is profoundly intense in its honesty. I highly recommend reading Moorcroft’s extensive background notes on his pieces. The very good news is that while this disc was seven years in the making, Moorcroft says cracking this ice has opened the flow, and there will be several more Eyes Cast Down releases in 2013. This is quite a good thing for ambient music fans.

Available the Eyes Cast Down web site.

Nils Quak hits his listeners with minimalist drone constructs based in granular and modular synthesis on his new release, Infinite Folds. Two of the three tracks were performed live, running 41 and 39 minutes respectively; the third is a four-minute intermission between the main attractions. The first and longest track, “Hamburg,” may test the patience of those who enjoy neither minimalism nor the micro-sound approach of granular synthesis. A good two-thirds of the track is a long, softly undulating, near-static wash of borderline white sound. It possesses a calming hiss, and the drones feel warm and innocuous, but it’s over 20 minutes before a noticeable shift in feel occurs. Quak eventually allows  dirge-like chords to rise out of the mist, and toward the very end of the track, he flips the switch and plays with jerky, deteriorating electronic sounds. “Cologne,” the modular work, starts out in a sparse, experimental mode that also requires a patient listener. Quak takes his gear through several shifts of tone, from foggy drifts to a blaring monotone to rasping drones. It’s more of a challenge to stay with than “Hamburg,” and feels more like Quak is testing listening limits. Between these two pieces is “Simmern,” four minutes of quiet reflection that churns a little impatiently below the surface.

Infinite Folds comes off as a study in structural contrast, pairing soft against sharp, reflective against aggressive. Bring a ready-to-experiment mindset with you when you listen.

Available at Bandcamp.