Kurai Keshiki ý — Tokubetsu No Tokoro

Kurai Keshiki was born in mid 2013 as a side-project by Emanuele Lago of Black Mountains Chronicles, dealing with a type of industrial-ambient more focused on field recordings and experimental sounds. “Tokubetsu No Tokoro” is the latest release from this project.

As this, hour long, fourteen track album starts you are immediately aware of the emptiness of the project. Spartan isn’t the word. Each track is a slow descent into nothingness, with less movement than a glacier. Mid to heavy drones and ambient textures mix with the occasional field recorded sample to try to break the overriding sense of increased monotony.

I think the problem with this album is the samey-ness of each track to its predecessor. Track one is ok, but track two isn’t much different. By Track six I’m just getting bored, I can’t even be bothered to find out the track titles.
I enjoy dark ambient music a lot, but even dark ambient music does have to progress and vary within an album, fourteen slabs of the same thing do not a good album make.

With “Tokubetsu No Tokoro” there’s nothing to make you feel anything You aren’t emotionally drawn into it, there is no depth, nor is there any sense of eeriness or claustrophobia. It’s just there static, monotonous and, sadly, unrelenting. It’s almost pointless