Style: Dark ambient
Primary Emotions/Themes: Slow brooding dark ambient with explosive moments
Thoughts: Dark ambient music can be a trap. It can lure you in, and make you think that something interesting is going to happen. It can build and build... and then it results in nothing. The equivalent to musical blue balls.
Despite the crude comparison, it often does feel like the dark ambient genre is a lot of hoopla for no pay off. Either the music does not progress overstaying its welcome or it gets too caught up its own idiosyncrasies to produce anything of meaning. Almost anyone can put creepy soundscapes together in a DAW... doing it well, or with some musical prowess... that's what separates the great artists from the masses in dark ambient.
Departed is a slow burn. Like so many other entries in the dark ambient genre it takes it's time to get where it want's to go. The main difference that I feel in this release with so many other dark ambient albums is that Departed knows where it wants to go.
Desiderii Marginis has created a journey with Departed. The music starts out droning, but as the songs progress, small bits of melody are added in... often hidden deep in the mix, but sometimes overt. This with the subtle shift in tone in some songs makes the album go from a generic sounding soundscape to a cinematic tour de force.
Like an artist that is working on an abstract painting Departed is slowly laid out before the listener one stroke at a time. An uneasy setting for a few moments, a glimmer of hope at another, perhaps a moment of clarity at yet another juncture. I don't feel like there is a single moment wasted on this record, if anything I do wish that there was more.
Unfortunately the album is cut down quite significantly for the vinyl release. The digital release is almost eighty minutes long, and here we are limited to a single LP. To be honest, I don't really notice it until I go to listen to the digital when I don't have access to my records. It's only then that I get a small pang of sadness that the full release isn't on vinyl. That said, I'm glad I have what I do as this album is an excellent slab of dark ambient and is highly recommended to fans of the genre.
Written July 29th 2024
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