The buzzing cavernous drones, circular effects and mystical power vibes will definitely catch your attention.
Altarmang is a project by one regular Cyclic law artist: Pär Boström (Kammarheit, Cities Last Broadcast). I’m quite familiar with his early works, at that time I reached Par for a book about dark ambient music but which finally haven’t seen the light, If I’m not wrong it was around 2007, a cool guy and an interesting sound “alchemist.” Today the dark ambient movement is getting bigger than it used to be so (outside of reviews) I don’t see myself writing anything substantial about it despite I’m still an avid follower of a few puzzling projects around.
In this new project (actually a tape was released in 2016—this album is a reissue) Pär Boström is accompanied by Kenneth Hansson to complement and enrich with sonic ideas the sound architecture. The music is slightly different to what we can hear on Kammarheit and Cities Last Broadcast, less vaporous abstract ambient with cinematic inflected sounds in favor of extremely lugubruous, ghostly minimal soundscapes in a hell-ish industrial / post-human mode that reminds me some Maurizio Bianchi, Sigilium S, Die Sonne Satan’s tapes. All tracks range from bleak electronic weirdness to haunting soundscaping isolationism. The album has a very craft-based and moodily raw approach (based on real-to-real tape and looped textures) which is striking and welcomed in the now more conventional textured synth excursions of dark ambient music. The buzzing cavernous drones, circular effects and mystical power vibes will definitely catch your attention. Dark droning hypnosis and a recommended album.
Void is available on Cyclic Law.
