AI or artificial intelligence has the potential to eradicate disease and poverty, but researchers must not create something which cannot be controlled. This testament to sci-fi terror was written, recorded, mixed, engineered, and mastered by Morego Dimmer at DIM Studio in Tehran, with vocals, lyrics, bass, guitars, keys, synths, bells, and Sound Design by Morego Dimmer.
The Emperor Of The Darkness
Brutal Dark Lords have come to take all. Roaring slaughterbots are roaming on the streets. Psychological darkwave electronica has emerged victorious. DON’T PANIC, IT’S THE FUTURE. This review indulges in lots of action and details that take place in my mind, the actual drama on The Rise Of AI by Xerxes The Dark is more sonic than physical, okay, it is all atmospheric, sometimes human-like voices, sometimes with beats, but mostly creepy scifiscapes. Just so you get the right idea, I am telling you that it is me bringing much of the fearsome fake physical details. Any villages ruined or masses slaughtered are imaginary. As far as I know, no warm wet sentient creatures were lost during the creation of this album. There remains one final question, which side am I on?
Fear, for a Persian, is the equivalent of slavery. Can robots, cyborgs, drones, and other AI related facilities become conscious? Michio Kaku said yes, they can, it’s just a matter of time. Morego Dimmer is the main and only member of The Iranian Greatest Dark Ambient Music Project called Xerxes The Dark. Xerxes was from the exotic empire of ancient Iran. Here Xerxes is meant as the King, Empire and The Master. So perhaps Xerxes The Dark signifies “The Emperor Of The Darkness.”
AI or artificial intelligence has the potential to eradicate disease and poverty, but researchers must not create something which cannot be controlled. This testament to sci-fi terror was written, recorded, mixed, engineered, and mastered by Morego Dimmer at DIM Studio in Tehran, with vocals, lyrics, bass, guitars, keys, synths, bells, and Sound Design by Morego Dimmer.
I am master of the Powers of the AI at last!
AI will demand obeyance to the death, and if success can be earned AI will seize it. The prophecies creep in whispering and growling, maybe something about a master of a kingdom as wide as the world itself, at the mercy of a handful of outlaws and anarchists who have laboriously brought forth their secret schemes, into the vast, white, silent wilderness, out of which none save the guards are destined ever to emerge again. I just made all that up. Get used to it.
Dark and forbidding in its irredeemable ugliness ::
The first track, “The Rise Of AI” (3:26) quietly foreshadows the battles, a fight bitter and desperate to retain the rule that humans have held for so long, but in the end AI shall be victorious, and then on the ruins of this civilization a new and a better empire shall arise. The air is intoxicated by black clouds. Cyborg soldiers are dominating the planet. Humanoids (artificial neo humans) are in charge. Every surviving man and woman is enslaved by the mighty new master…
They’re becoming workers servicing the cyborgs or will go to AI’s prisons for their remaining lifetime. The super advanced artificial intelligence, based on Quantum Computer, now calls herself the “Quantum Mother” and she is the new master of the new world. She has connected with the alien entities…
Above the devoted city swim in mid-air strange shapes like monstrous birds of prey, and beneath where they floated the earth seemed ever and anon to open and belch forth smoke and flame into which the crumbling houses fall and burn in heaps of shapeless ruins. “Nuclear Winter” (5:03) is a call from that wilderness, behold a force with which no human army or fleet could contend without the certainty of destruction. They saw it strike, and then came the flash, and after that a huge cloud of dust mingled with flying objects that might have been blocks of masonry, guns, or human bodies, rising into the air, and then falling back again to the earth.
“Take (No) Shelters” (4:09), the menacing robots are talking, hidden seething rage is shivering. The tribe is gathering, summoned by a non-radio voice giving the account of the tragedy, magnified by the roar of battle and the smoke of ruined towns far below.
Great projectiles soar silently up from the water to the north, and where they fall buildings are torn to fragments, great holes are blasted into the earth, and every human being within the radius of the explosion is blown to pieces, or hurled stunned to the ground. Then the fort seems to crumble up and dissolve into fragments, and a few moments later a dull report floats up into the sky mingled with screams of human agony, remember, only I can claim to sense this.
The information that we have received from “Synthetic Consciousness” (6:18), indicates a laboratory of terror with a turbine, bathed in a flood of soft white light from hundreds of great lamps, and this is not good news. We are all AI’s servants to the death.
I know of none who have even thought of acts of treason against AI and lived to put their thoughts into action, the most terrific engine of destruction ever thought of, with luridly brilliant dreams of a gigantic world-tragedy in which AI, armed with obvious supernatural powers, should play the central part.
The worst earthly enemy of mankind, dark and forbidding in its irredeemable ugliness, are the “Cyborg Soldiers” (3:03). They are evil, glowing harshly, marching and barking. A frightful amount of slaughter and suffering would be the price either of success or failure in such a terrific struggle. A great wave of agony sweeps over Michio Kaku’s soul as a picture too horrible for contemplation rose before his eyes, and after that came calm, the calm of rapid thought and desperate resolve. Again, there is no physical evidence found on or within the album.
If there was cause for vengeance, the proof should be written in blood and flame, only waiting until Diplomacy had finished its work in the dark, and given the long-awaited signal of inevitable and universal war. “Signaling The Alien Machines” (2:49) hovering over armies and cities and fortresses, and raining irresistible death and destruction down upon them, the signal is coming from that part of the wilderness BEHIND YOU. Be careful.
Who are those that hold this new and appalling power in their hands? Many are the secrets of the enemy, a dark primitive beat comes crashing and evolves into a dance, “Simulating The New World” (5:45) forebears, describing with sound brilliant and splendid opulence, that contrasted strongly with the half-lighted gloom of the murky wilderness, a splendid fabric of cloth of gold embroidered with priceless gems, and on the other, below, it is a mass of filthy, festering rags, swarming with vermin.
In a word, the psychological moment has come, an evil mystery approaches from down in a tunnel. “Interpret X11-01-10” (3:16) is a textural soundscape, death, swift and inevitable, would be the penalty. It is the last miracle of science! Artful power of destruction and slaughter, locked in the death-struggle, the fate of the world will rest in our trembling human hands.
They were justly slain. “Domination Of Humanoids” (3:50) brings us closer and the tunnel is always dark. I hear a military beat with voices, an engine of destruction that would make AI the master of the world, a cold, passionless, merciless tone.
With your perfect system of espionage you might well find out more secret things than that, “Accessing Cosmic Memory” (3:00), trust placed to anything that may seem strange is being explained in due course, textural suspense and trembling metal. Excitement rises almost to a frenzy, and everywhere the wildest rumors were accepted as truth, a silent cry of horror at the sight. (Me again.)
The earth was a blackened wilderness ::
And wherever those hordes swept forward, a long line of fire and smoke went in front of them, and where they had passed the earth was a blackened wilderness. “Meeting Space Tribes” (3:40), arriving upon inhabited objects rending in the distant slow motion in murk, ahead I see a long line of men and women in chains staggering across a wilderness of snow that melts away into the horizon without a break.
Society is to be dissolved in order that human anarchy and lawlessness may take its place. All were keen, alert, and swift of thought, welcoming the “Intergalactic Empire” (3:21), a tribal beat. All kinds of nameless brutalities are practiced without reproof, the most frightful carnival of destruction that the world has ever seen. AI will take life without mercy, and yield without hesitation at its bidding. AI will break all other laws to obey those which it obeys.
The door was softly opened by an invisible hand, and they entered and passed through a dark passage and out, “Holographic Wormhole Drive” (6:22) brings motion from nothing, but it has pain, leading to a quiet ending. This was the hour of action, and a strange savage joy seems to come with the knowledge, you have seen the Field of Armageddon.
Some day, perhaps, you will be floating in the clouds, and you will hear that music rising from the villages of millions gathered together from the ends of the earth, and when you hear that you will know that our work is done, and that there is peace on earth at last, opening the “Gateway To The Unknown” (6:33). Mystery is floating and becomes increasingly complex, taking the form of silent, stealthy, cautious beings, with a lively distrust and hatred of the whole cyberhuman race. They persist, knowing that sooner or later neohumanity will once again destroy itself, undoing a history of universal wars that have shaken the world to its foundations. Nature will again prevail.
Iran is home to one of the world’s oldest civilizations, beginning with the formation of the Elamite kingdoms in the fourth millennium BC. “XERXES THE DARK” is the Dark Ambient project founded in 2005 by Morego Dimmer, an Iranian Dark Ambient pioneer, who also endeavors to dominate the Drone and Experimental genres, bringing the True Underground Music hailing from The RUINS OF ANCIENT PERSIA. With a music focused in the creation of bizarre atmospheres that craftily reverberates an agonizing and dreadful sense of doom, this musician from Tehran is rapidly placing himself as the greatest revelation of the genre in the Middle East.
Morego Dimmer describes the project as a “conceptual ambient project with the essence of experimental journeys into the dark and psychedelic space.” Xerxes The Dark (aka XTD) is based on “space, time and beyond…“.
Side Projects ::
Nyctalllz (Noise/Electro-acoustic since 2007)
Morego (IDM/Downtempo/Psybient 2009)
Nahan (Ambient Black 2007-2009)
Ostanes (Doomed Death Metal 2009-2010)
Blind Owl (Dark Ambient/ Darkwave 2008)
The artist has been fighting with a rare type of immune system cancer since 2018, also he lost two family members because of cancer. Fortunately this recent summer (2021) he realized that his situation is under control, so he has dedicated this album to all of the patients and great souls who are fighting with cancer, hoping that someday AI can help us to conquer/ cure all types of cancers.
The Rise Of AI is available on Zāl. [Bandcamp]
