Sabled Sun - 2146

Coming off of Cryo Chamber, a label which caters to audiences of dark ambient music run by (with music released by) Simon Heath. His very own project, Sabled Sun, is a post apocalyptic centered album, which does a fair job of creating a bleak atmosphere and garners a sense of loss and regret. However, that's also where the album tends to fade; there's enough to keep the mood dark and down, but not enough to really convey what the artist intended.

Now, to me, the post apocalyptic landscape is something of beauty, fear, and otherwise huge mystery. And fans of the genre shall be glad to know that the theme is well presented in this album. Also, just a dandy fact to throw in here, is that this album is a continuation and follow up to '2145'. It continues the journey of the protagonist from the first album.

"Through the Gates" serves as almost a Fallout like scenario; you hear the footsteps of the wanderer, various sounds of nature, along with some narration. It's like the wanderer is just searching for his place in this world, or searching for someone to help him get through it.

From there, the song titles pretty much speak for themselves, and serve as a great story. This is where my own little interpretation of this journey comes in. "Inner Sanctum" focuses on survival, as the need for water comes through with the sound of just that; water flows nicely through and though.

"Scanning for Life Forms", well, the title pretty much serves for itself. In the desolated world, one would hope to find another form of life to help them cope with nothing being alive. However, the one thing that I did not like about this song was the drone effects. They were okay, but sometimes they just threw me off a bit and really didn't seem too, too pleasant.

"Power Cell" and "Exo Suit" almost serve as compliments to one another: The person finds a power cell and probably uses it to energize an Exo Suit he finds. A neat little accordance, but, story aside, I find the two songs both to be boring and dull in comparison to some of the earlier songs.

I found the robotic noise that comes in midway through the song to be very fitting, especially since the next song is titled, "My New Best Friend", signifying that our protagonist has found someone - or something - to be his or her companion. Again, however, I found myself thinking that "Graveyard of Broken Machines" was very dull aside from the robot noises. But, "My New Best Friend" was a bit awesome, as it brings an almost upbeat attitude to the album, as should be expected.

And, I'm guessing that as they continued, they encountered the "Planetarium", both a location and the song title. Nothing too special about it, but it leads to "Deep Within", which is a very cool song. It reminds me of some type of revelation is going on, that the protagonist discovered something. Whatever that discovery was probably brought us to the next song.

And that song is, "My Dying Robot". Either the duo encountered something horrid and had to fight it off, or the robot just malfunctioned. But, the final song, "End Me" shows us just what happens. There had to be an end to this robot companion, as the song implies. And the tone of the song, which is like something that speaks of moving on from the past, suggests just that. I found it to be inspirational in a sense, and my favorite track on the album.

So, we do have a pretty cool album; it has a lot of guessing to be done about the story. The music is the narrative, and the minimal design leads you to create your own scenario as to what is going on. However, the music also isn't that of the greatest. I've definitely heard better. But, the unique thing about the album is how the ambient music weaves a story together so well. It's not the best, but it certainly deserves a certain amount of praise. And for that, I do praise it. Jul 14 2013