V/A DARK AMBIENT RADIO "Volume 1" CD

At eleven the track-count stops and another marvelous sampler will have played on your stereo. With the title Dark-Ambient-Radio, Vol. 1, there is not much to guess about the content of this album. The collected artists on this sampler are in between completely new and world-famous (within the genre that is). The absolute most well-known on here is Ah Cama-Sotz, but also Svartsinn and Phelios have earned their place in the dark ambient genre already. For Evoke Scurvee, Nihil Communication, Mytrip, and Nagual Art this is the first occurence on a CD. All others on this album have had releases before, so depending on how much you like dark ambient, you might have stumbled upon tracks or releases already. So the balance of "something old, something new" slightly tilts towards the "new" and that is always good. Getting to know new names and finding the well hidden pearl in the oyster gives you the feeling there is still stuff to explore in an at times slow developing genre. But does this album contain dark ambient? Well, yes and no. Partially there is definitly some references toward the definition, but at times there is also a lot of experimentation with fieldrecordings, samples, drones, and emotion. A purist would call file those tracks under drones or experimental. But let's just f*ck purism this time.  A must-have for explorers and those dark of mind ... (Gothtronic)