Igloo Magazine :: Mount Shrine :: The Yasu Ether Project (Cryo Chamber)

A quiet closing chapter

Cryo Chamber has held the bar for exploratory dark ambient music with a cinematic edge since Simon Heath (the artist behind Atrium Carceri) founded the label with a collaborative focus that has become its defining characteristic. The catalog spans deep space drone, horror-influenced soundscapes, Lovecraftian collaborative projects, and the kind of patient, immersive dark ambient that rewards extended, solitary listening. Among its most beloved artists was Mount Shrine—the project of César Alexandre, a Brazilian producer from Rio de Janeiro who grew up absorbing Brian Eno, Burial, Aphex Twin, and Akira Yamaoka‘s score for Silent Hill 2 before finding his own voice in lo-fi field recordings, vinyl crackle, tape hiss, and long meditative drone structures. He debuted on Cryo Chamber with Winter Restlessness in 2018, followed by Ghosts on Broken Pavements in 2019. He also worked under Mount Hibiki and released vaporwave under the name Lindsheaven Virtual Plaza, an early and influential figure in that scene.

César Alexandre passed away on April 15, 2021, from COVID-19. He was one of the first artists whose work made people fall in love with ambient music, and the void he left has been felt consistently in the years since. Cryo Chamber has honored his memory carefully—releasing All Roads Lead Home in 2022 and The Mount Hibiki Tapes in 2024, and The Yasu Ether Project arrives now as the final piece of audio he ever sent to Simon Heath. A version had previously appeared on his own Bandcamp before the page closed. Now preserved and released once more, it stands as a quiet closing chapter.

There is a somber feeling that comes with reading about this release before you press play, and that feeling doesn’t leave once you do. Listening to this is the last remnant of his feelings and emotions, the final transmission from an artist whose music offered rest, solitude, and quiet escape to everyone who found it. Just like most Cryo Chamber releases you can expect a very dark and soft ride through the entirety of the album, but there is something that peaks through all the darkness, a simple peace that is haunting. You don’t know what it is that’s calming about it. Maybe it’s the field recordings of birds and daytime, the remembrance of what it feels like when you’ve just woken from a bad storm. Unsettling and peaceful at the same time. That’s how it feels listening to this.

Unsettling and peaceful at the same time ::

“Gaseous Peak” and “Polysunset” are the standouts on this release. The entirety of the album is wrapped in vinyl hiss, that persistent crackle that was always central to Mount Shrine‘s identity, the sound of something being played back from a medium that’s been worn down by time. It gives the record a physical texture, a sense that these recordings exist in a material world even as the music itself drifts away from one.

The closing track is something different. The synths here aren’t just simple pads and atmospheric textures like the rest of the album. Little vocal touches, small nothings, barely registered, appear as the pads build. A small key arp plays in and out, and the visual being created in your head as you listen is genuinely peaceful in a way that feels earned after everything that preceded it. The contradiction at the heart of this closing track is what makes it so affecting, the familiar Mount Shrine darkness is still present, but something lighter has been let in, a crack of warmth that sits differently knowing what this release represents.

Simon Heath closes the release notes with “May you rest in peace.” There’s nothing to add to that. The Yasu Ether Project is an overall haunting and pleasant experience, a final document of an artist who understood that darkness and stillness aren’t opposites of beauty but conditions under which a particular kind of beauty becomes possible. César Alexandre knew that instinctively, and this album proves it one last time.

The Yasu Ether Project is available on Cryo Chamber. [Bandcamp]