Release Year: 2024
Label: Zoharum
Tunnels Of Āh are a dark ambient act who’ve been releasing material for a bit above ten years now, most of them via renowned UK label for dark, weird and experimental music Cold Spring. So whilst perhaps not the biggest name in the dark ambient field, the project certainly has chops.
This CD is a re-release of the apparently digital only The Charnel Working album from 2015, expanded with the previously unreleased Klesha File release, resulting in a whopping total of 70 minutes of dark, ominous, ritualistic ambient.
That’s a lot dark ambient to chew.
On the spectrum of dark ambient, it’s fairly easy to pigeonhole this release. Apart from being ritualistic, it’s also on the noisier, more abrasive side of the genre, featuring plenty of very distorted, broken and relatively confrontational layers. Still, the release never crosses into the realm of noise, but retains its essentially brooding, somewhat distant and shapeless qualities. The rumbling, crackling drones contrast the quieter, more minimalistic humming and subtle ringing tones, creating at the best of times some genuinely harrowing, disturbing soundscapes.
Whilst not overly so thematically, there’s a strong horror element here. Not that of cheap horror flicks, but the truly terrifying, existential horror of confronting the quiet, dispassionate yet cruel and merciless denizens of subterranean tunnels and nether realms – either within, or without. And it is in these moments when Tunnels Of Āh truly ascends to their greatest heights: when menacing, inhuman and occult ambience clashes with the grating industrial droning of dying machines cutting into vast blocks of concrete, and ominous bells ring in the background. Then, this CD is truly the nightmare audial companion for travelling through benighted, abandoned mazes of the soul.
As said above, 70 minutes of dark ambient is a lot to take in. And yet, it isn’t. Tunnels Of Āh display considerable mastery of their craft on this CD. At no point does one feel like it drags on and on and on. The superb atmospheres and sufficient variety between tracks ensures the listener is engrossed for the whole duration.
The two separate releases that make this compendium also go extremely well together. One cannot easily say where Klesha File begins and The Charnel Working ends. This is quite important in dark ambient music of this nature: that the listening experience is a seamless whole.
The Charnel Working + Klesha File is a harrowing, disturbing, unsettling and at the same time, endlessly rewarding listening experience. No fan of dark ambient should miss out on this.
Only Death Is Real 