My Dark Lake - Silent Universe

Here we have another EP from dark ambient artist My Dark Lake. I've covered this artist before, and have liked, and even loved, his musical output in the past, and I did not expect anything different this time around. And what we have here contains some new sounds; a bit of rock inspired anthems that, while they don't overcome the quality and greatness of previous exploits, do manage to please the aural senses.

Tragedy luxx comes up first, and contains a high pitched note that sounds like it's coming from an electronic guitar. In the way off distance, you can hear the bang of a drum every so often. Around the three minute mark, the drums come forth along with that note, and carry out a bit of an ambient filled rock tune. It's nothing tremendous, or jaw dropping, but it was different.

Then we're given Countless winter (post version) (the canon version appeared on a three way album between himself, In Tenebriz, and Songs From a Tomb, titled Distant Skies). This version just seems down in quality in comparison to the original, and was not even necessary. More drums and that rock aesthetic are added, but it didn't do much more but harm the song. I suppose the same can be said about Gray haze (post version).

And, within the last track, we're handed some of the more classic, dark ambient sounds that My Dark Lake has produced in the past, and I'm quite grateful for that. Mystifying, electronic sounds that both enrapture my mind came forth. That is, until a little into the one minute mark we're given faster drums, and a guitar strum. I was enjoying the song a lot before that happened, but then I kind of just felt so-so on the matter. Thankfully, the ending of the song gets back into more somber territory, and ends off nicely.

Now, I'm all for an artist trying new things, going above and beyond and moving forth with their sounds. And that's what My Dark Lake attempted to do. However, the end result just wasn't satisfactory. His ambient works are still solid; that can easily be said as certain sections in the fourth track on this EP had me blown away. However, the other sections, and reworks of older songs that included the drums and guitar work just didn't cut it.

I encourage this artist to still move forward, I really do. However, this is not the direction he should be going in. He either needs to learn to merge both these newfound sounds well enough into his deep levels of ambient works to attain a perfect harmony, or drop them and move onto a different sound. Whichever way he decides to go, I do hope his next piece is better than this. Jan 06 2015