Strand

"Damian Valles might be the best dark ambient artist that hovers just outside the dark ambient scene. He’s put records out on all your favorite labels (Hibernate, Experimedia, Under The Spire, BLWBCK, Audio Gourmet...) and now he’s got Strand, his second release for the french label VoxxoV Records, but it could just as easily have been put out by Hospital Productions if it was only a little bit synthier & angrier.

Strand is a work of brilliance, blurring the boundaries between exceptionally bleak drone and haunted minimal industrial, with mind-numbing static electricity buzzing behind your eyes, motorik rhythms made from detritus tumbling around in empty oil drums, and deep low end generator thrum vibrating under the sound of hanging scythes clanking like windchimes, these are the sparse & ominous sounds of the heavy woes carried through life, the ones nobody sees but everybody endures, when you catch a glimpse of Death in your reflection, Valles’ music helps you dismiss it and just focus on the insanity at hand."

by Justin Snow of Anti-Gravity Bunny