Lustmord - Dark Matter [Touch - 2016]Dark Matter sees this industrial legend & dark ambient pioneer returning to one of his favourite subjects/ themes- deep dark space, and it’s often eerier vast-ness. This CD release from late summer 2016 offers up three lengthy works, and it’s fair to say it’s some of the most compelling & haunting dark ambience I’ve heard in a good few years. The three twenty-to-twenty seven minute tracks are built around a blend of manipulated recordings of deep space sounds and cosmic activity from between the years 1993 and 2003- taking in recordings from various sources, including NASA. These recordings are skilfully stretched, layered, and built together to create these vast & slowly shifting sound-worlds, which take in the vastness, mystery, and wholly compelling atmospheric darkness of deep space. Each track is both eventful, yet considered in it’s unfold- with Lustmord very carefully treading the line between worthy compositionally progression and atmosphere. Also there is a fairly varied blend of different types of texturally settings, as well as often memorable & haunting harmonic drifts running through all three of the tracks lifetimes. From the very start to the last minute one is total captured by the albums slowly shifting sonic landscapes- like all great ambient work this has to taken as a whole journey, and one long 70 minute ride. You have to let yourself become one with the slow ebb & flow of the sonic landscapes; as you both ponder the seemingly uncharted vastness of space, and mankind’s small-ness with in the universe. Simply put Dark Matter is a dark ambient masterpiece- which I can see myself returning to again & again, for both it’s skilful unfold, cleverly layered detail, and haunting yet highly compelling vast-ness. Roger Batty
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