Review Summary: Horror-filled dark ambient that will transport you to the darkest place in your own mind.
Imagine being buried alive. What a truly horrible experience it must be. First, you panic, waking up in a strange, pitch black place and not understanding what happened to you. Next, reality starts to set in and you realize that you have limited oxygen with no chance of ever escaping. Finally, your breathing slows, you drift in and out of consciousness until the sweet release of death pulls you under. Now, of course, I've never been buried alive, but I can imagine that it's kind of like what I just described. Claustrophobia takes over, you can't move and you can't call for help. These are the exact feelings that Central Industrial's
Tuned to a Dead Channel invoke upon the listener.
As I've gotten more into ambient and electronic music, I've noticed that I prefer one of two styles: either the light and airy, fantasy inspired stuff or things that are quite dark and cold.
Tuned to a Dead Channel, if you couldn't guess, is much more like the latter. This album draws from industrial techno and dark ambient in particular and I can't remember the last time an album truly freaked me out until now. Each and every track is full of freezing industrial passages mixed with synth work that simply makes you feel as if you're wide awake in a coffin buried six feet under the frigid earth. Tribal-esque drumming rings in the background that sounds like something that came from House of 1000 Corpses. It's like being marched, bound and gagged, to a cliff in the dead of night and being thrown off without so much as a thought beforehand.
This duo knows how to solicit feelings of pure darkness better than almost anyone I've heard up to this point in my music journey. And isn't that what dark ambient music is really all about? It should make you shake in your boots and give you a feeling of impending doom. While this album is minimal in nature, the reverb-laden white noise transports you to the blackest planet in the solar system. As the album progresses, you'll feel the oppressive nature of the synths and drums take over your entire body like you're stuck in a terrible nightmare. It's almost as if you're suffering from sleep paralysis despite being wide awake and engaged in everything that this album has to offer.
This duo really knows how to pack a punch while remaining relatively simple throughout the runtime.
Tuned to a Dead Channel sounds exactly like the title suggests. It's like being stuck in the videotape from The Ring and the sheer sense of panic right before Samara pops out of the television to brutally murder you. You'll try to escape, you'll try to scream, but all you can manage to do is stand there and accept your horrible fate. Like I said, that is exactly what dark ambient music is all about in my personal opinion. This style of music should conjure up the most dreadful scenarios your mind can think of, and in that sense,
Tuned to a Dead Channel succeeds with flying colors. If you want music that is truly and utterly terrifying, look no further than this amazing piece of music right here.
