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Do you make contemporary Dark Ambient?
If you make contemporary ambient like Antent, .diedlonely, Øneheart, Headphone Activist etc, post a link to your music. I’d love to hear it. And tell me what apps you use to create it.
Comments
I think @Svetlovska has done this in the past. She makes great Ambient.
Dark ambient or not, I happen to find this an interesting production watch
The best " dark ambient" I have found is on Bandcamp under the Cryochamber label, also under 1798. Svetloska has some great tracks as well.
Hi, @looperboy and thank you all who name checked me. Firstly, let me endorse the votes for Cryo Chamber on Bandcamp and YouTube. They have a vast catalog of DA material. Atrium Carceri are worth checking out too, as well as anything by Allseits. This is my favourite of theirs, and the thing which opened the gate to DA for me:
If you are interested in checking out my stuff, almost entirely made on iPad inside AUM, with the odd foray into field recordings and hardware, I have a SoundCloud as ‘Cthonicist’ with over 100 tracks on it now (!), some darker and/or more ambient than others. I always have peak DA like Allseits as my pole star, but my lack of musical competence means I only rarely hit the mark as accurately as I would like. One where I think I got close fairly recently was this:
I cross post all of my tracks here in the Creations section, and usually include some brief comments on how I made the thing, and the apps used in it. (I have a rule that if I buy an app, I must use it that day in a posted track.)
The constants are: AUM, and in particular, using it to record File Player loops of an app, which I then speed up, slow down, or otherwise mess with as I live mix the thing out to a stereo mixdown in AudioShare; ( a very fast way of working btw which, absent any automation in AUM, sacrifices control for flow.); any number of midi sequencer apps which have generative or random functions; and the FAC Alteza reverb.
After that, it is a question of attitude. Can this app Dark Ambient? By which I mean make or enhance slow, deep, melancholic and textured soundscapes made without knowledge of or regard to conventional musical structure? If yes, then it’s time to hit record…
Everything on my Bandcamp page, less than 10 years old, is exclusively iPad. I used Loopy HD, and whatever new synth I was playing with at the time.
Edit: Dang you Bandcamp, why doesn't your Embed link work? Soundcloud's and Youtube's do...
double post
Lustmord is also on bandcamp, and is an absolute must if you’ve not heard his work before. If you appreciate @Svetlovska ’s work, you’re very likely to dig it.
Don’t know any of the above artists but I term some of my stuff dark(ish) ambient.
Whatever is in the dark recesses of the grey matter sometimes tries to claw its way out…
All iPad instruments/effects
Hi @looperboy
Nice question!
Mainly dark ambient… a few beats scattered here and there..
https://hearthis.at/id23/
https://id23.bandcamp.com/music
I use a lot of apps… granular synthesis, delays, reverbs (you can never have too many reverbs right!?)
Hilda is fun:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DBecu9_Nvk5/
What is the difference between dark ambient and contemporary dark ambient?
About thirty years.
😂🤣
Dark Ambient is what everyone has posted links to so far. Contemporary Dark Ambient is very different from all of this and I really wish people had read the question properly, and asked themselves the same question you did, before posting music. Contemporary Dark Ambient originated from the Øneheart track called Snowfall, essentially. It’s both a visual aesthetic and a musical style with strong melodies and traditional musical structure. The duration of a piece is very short, usually between 30 seconds and 2 minutes. Average about 1 and a half minutes most often, and the palette of sounds is quite strict, and quite narrow: simple square wave or sine wave for the melody, heavy Reese bass, distant Rhodes arpeggio and an ambient soundbed, all swathed in very long reverb. If you listen to some Antent, Headphone Activist, .diedlonely, and Øneheart, you’ll get the picture quite quickly.
Oh, Conteeeeeemporary Dark Ambient. Well, why didn’t you say so.
I prefer Charcoal Emobient
@looperboy thanks for sharing those bands... I can see that they generally are working with similar sounds... although none of them tagged themselves as "contemporary dark ambient" on bandcamp, and my attempts to google this sub-genre brought up essentially nothing.... so I kind of wonder if you are the one creating this distinction with your choice of words? Anyway lots of contemporary artists making dark ambient music and lots of old DA artists making contemporary (of this day and age) dark ambient.
And wow to all of you that shared your dark ambient and experimental tracks! I really need to dig into all of your stuff as the bits I heard were super compelling. Cthonicist, AKLO, Barabajagal, and id_23... Thank you!
My sound is too active to be DA... I'm dark ambient "adjacent"... more a mix of DA/noise/field recordings.
https://aemc.bandcamp.com/track/masking
https://tescogermany.bandcamp.com/album/distressed-signals
none of that was done on my iPad.... this track was though
Well call me an old fashioned sloppy reader clearly not across all the kids’ up to the minute trends, @looperboy, for not reading your question properly, and thanks for pointing it out so politely!
Here’s me, making what I would call Dark Ambient, er, NOW, so, er, ‘contemporary’, I guess, in my antiquated, fuddy duddy ‘using language to mean what it means’ kind of way, presuming to waste your time bringing a few artists to your attention you might not have come across, in a clearly stupid time wasting attempt to respond to your question, when what you meant was ‘contemporary’ Dark Ambient! How could I have been so thoughtless? It’s all clear now. I consider myself schooled.
Please, and I really mean this, please don’t waste your time checking out any of my stuff, or any other of those old school so-called ‘Dark Ambient’ losers. We’re just not ‘contemporary’ enough. Even when we are.
Just enjoying the tracks
I think too many sub-genres just messes things up
For instance some of these contemporary stuff gave be downtempo impressions, but not all of them what I would consider ambient. But all damn cool
First impression of contemporary ambient: ambient for the social media generation because the tracks are short
Further listening: not dark enough, but cool soundtrack vibes.
Svetlovska win the internet today, nicely done !!
What about ancient light ambiance?
Rate my setup
So this is contemporary dark ambient? Kind of blows my mind that this has 60 million views. It's pleasant, it's neither very dark nor very ambient, tho, imo. The non-contemporary dark ambient guys called: they want their genre back 🤣 (sorry, couldn't resist)
Seems indeed like a controversial label:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ambientmusic/comments/135peuo/my_irritation_with_this_strange_trend_propagated/
@senhorlampada :
Rate your setup? - needs more dark lights, obvs.
Your definition of the kids’ new thing “ ambient for the social media generation because the tracks are short…not dark enough, but cool soundtrack vibes.” - spot on! Melancholic, yes, but…
It’s the difference between feeling a ‘bit sad’; and howling terrified gut-shredding existential DESPAIR at the inevitable, imminent end of ALL THINGS!
… it’s all right. I’ve calmed down now.
The meds are kicking in.
I'm thinking our @DavidEnglish is a contemporary dark ambient artist and doesn't even know it....should someone tell him to dim the lighting and shorten his tracks to become a global sensation ... https://forum.loopypro.com/discussion/63280/late-afternoon-pianoteq-noire-jaeger-continua#latest
FWIW, my definition of Dark Ambient being made now by, well, me (the word ‘contemporary’ having been claimed, apparently, and I don’t presume to talk for anyone else) is:
“The noise that was made when a Goth who couldn’t play anything got old.”
That, @deadpoetlive, however is a damn good call. I happen to like David’s work as-is, but I can definitely see how it could be hacked to more nefarious and internet winning ends.
The Reddit link above indicates how some of these, ugh, ‘contemporary’ artists have managed to rack up streams in the millions with their less inspired 90 second sadathons , as a business model.
Multiple short remixes of essentially the same track, seeded into playlists featuring more popular artists, and given a catchy title, like, oh, I dunno, ‘music for after the breakup’ or ‘sad bois sobbing’ or some such.
The tracks are short enough that the listener will let them play through before the next bona fide banger of sad boi stuff comes on, and all the different versions of the same wallpapered track boost the listens. A rising tide lifts all boats, or something. Come up with a well enough crafted playlist, with a catchy enough title and the algorithm does the rest.
Quite a smart plan for this modern world.
Sadly.
Smart kids milking ambient to monetize on streaming platforms, now that's a trend I didn't see coming.
Contemporary Dark Ambient my arse !
I recon 95 % + of the tracks posted here are better than the one @Gavinski posted. It’s had 40,000 + comments… unbelievable 🧐
Haha, howl on, your pain is justified.
The best thing about ambient (be it dark or not, but I prefer Dark) is when I wanna focus on a job and I just drown in it and cannot notice the beginning or end of things
Love @Svetlovska's tracks for that matter. Yeah, i'm a fanboy
NIN Ghosts too, and Lustmord's body of work