I’ve never given too much thought to picking a soundtrack to accompany my Submechanophobia, defined by Google search as “the fear of submerged objects.” And yet, Cryo Chamber has released just that: a nightmarish paean to one of Lovecraft’s enduring horrors that dredges sunless oceans to dump its aural harvest of dread squirming fresh upon the slab. Yog-Sothoth is the eighth in a series of ambient Lovecraft-themed releases from the Cryo Chamber label, which has pulled twenty separate artists into a seamless collaboration to produce each distinct, epic soundscape. Cryo Chamber told me, “All of us artists worked together with each other’s audio, so each artist is all over every second of these albums.” I’ve not yet listened to the prior albums in this series, but the Bandcamp profile bills Yog-Sothoth as “field recordings from foggy towns to desolate mountains” and makes references to deep-space drone. From where I stand, the mission has been accomplished.
The album consists of just two tracks, each clocking in at around an hour, which develop texturally like sonic lava lamps to showcase the subtlety of the collaboration. This is quiet, creeping menace that finds outlet in plumbing the gloom of empty spaces, accented by intimate chimes that swim up like hammers pinging the hull of a dead submarine. We encounter no jump scares or heart-pounding beats, as this album isn’t about human horror; it’s all in it for the cosmic fear. In a way, and removed from context, Yog-Sothoth can be relaxing… if only those dissonances would stop trying to invade the mind.
No matter what you might find yourself doing, from running a Call of Cthulu campaign to staring in existential horror into the ever-darkening abyss that lies below the ocean’s placid surface, to pondering the true nature of the lightless Void, take Yog-Sothoth with you. It’s excellent company in the bleakest of places.
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