I happily found another unsung gem today, hiding away on the fairly new netlabel Mirakelmusic. From stark, exposed ambient drones to brittle and elegant textures, Bluedark - Explorations far below certainly has its moments. Occasional whispers vividly decorate the saturated low frequency incursions, and this makes Explorations seemingly more original than a lot of the darker ambient I’ve found on netlabels recently.
Erik Glans, the musician behind Bluedark, has made this release consistent, and allows time for each of his ideas to breathe. Sometimes his explorations choose to lead us to new territory, or we are lead back to where we started. “The old ship under the ground” takes us to brittle and distorted territories, bringing to mind ghosts fixed in time, decaying, but strangely this feels natural and is one of the least melancholic tracks on the EP.
“Hidden words”, however, is deep and more worrying. Glitches and rhythms ring out and are swallowed back into darker regions, followed by more whispers. These voices push these tracks back into consciousness as they drift out of awareness, a powerful device in its subtleness. Some of these pieces seem to hang like audio sculptures in my mind, and they’d make good soundtracks to Beksinski’s style of painting. That’s an entirely personal observation, however, you may see it in a different way altogether.