You released your first dark ambient album back in 2006, and have been active in the scene for almost 20 years now. How did you get into making dark ambient soundscapes in the first place and what is it about dark ambient that appeals to you?
I don’t remember when exactly I first discovered dark ambient. Back in high school I had gotten pretty into melodic death metal (gothenburg!) and I knew a bit about industrial (Skinny Puppy, KMFDM), but other than a couple metalhead friends I didn’t know anyone who listened to weird or experimental music. At some point in late high school a friend sent me a track he downloaded from Napster with the title “Coil – Dark River.mp3”. I can never remember if that is an actual Coil song or not, but I do remember it being an incredibly somber, atmospheric piece and it instantly piqued my interest and made me want to search out more music like that. Up until then, other than being used as an intro track on metal albums, I don’t think I had an idea that ambient (let alone dark ambient) was an actual viable music style. I’m not sure how it evolved from there, but a few years later I just sort of had mp3s on my computer from guys like Desiderii Marginis, Atrium Carceri and In Slaughter Natives and thought it was the coolest shit ever.
My favorite aspect of music is atmosphere and the reason that dark ambient resonates so much with me is because it’s entirely atmosphere. Ambient music in general is very personal, introspective music and I would say this is even moreso true of dark ambient. It’s the best music in existence for invoking the gnosis state required when looking deeply inward and descending into meditative and ritual journeys. It’s able to connect with and impact the listener on a subconscious level.
The other thing that I like about it is that it’s intrinsically non-commercial. There are no trends. No one will ever make dark ambient to try to get clout, or to feign being cool, or to exploit for monetary gain, or whatever. It’s kind of the antithesis of mainstream culture, which is desperately needed in these modern times as man grapples with an increasing level of technology which unfortunately serves to vastly propagate his worst aspects. Dark Ambient is the temple which is permanently sealed to all the bullshit of outside life.
Is there a particular release that stands out for you, and that you are extra proud of and satisfied with? If so, could you tell us a bit about it and why it feels special to you?
Not really. I put everything I have into each release, so the newest one is always the best and most interesting thing I was able to do at the time. Then of course in hindsight I look back, hear all the flaws and think they all suck, haha. But every album has a story and comes with its share of ups, downs, wins, and losses. It feels unfair to put any of them over any other.
If I had to pick one that best defines the project overall, it would be the Anagami redux I released in 2018. I completely reworked the 2012 Anagami album with a bunch of bonus material after Tympanik (releasing on Tympanik was an incredible honor!) closed and I got the rights back. It was a ton of work which was undertaken for pretty much no reason except to prove to myself how much I had improved as a musician/producer and that I was capable of writing something decent, but I feel like the end result perfectly captured just about everything I wanted the project to be and it defined Worms of the Earth as a unique entity in the realm of industrial/rhythmic noise.
Your most successful and well-known project is Worms of the Earth. Last week you released an album with your new project Aetherium Nebula. Could you tell us a bit more about this project and in what ways it differs from what you have previously done as Worms of the Earth?
An integral part of the Worms of the Earth project is the spiritual aspect—it’s paralleled my own spiritual journey since its inception. On most of the albums this aspect is very overt, although even when it isn’t there is always a deeply spiritual undertone to the music and aesthetic of the release. This is especially true of the dark ambient material; it’s always written in conjunction with certain ritualistic practice. The music either describes this ritual process, or it is generated during it. While I would never change the way this is done as it is extremely important to me, it does become restrictive on the type of material that can be written for the project. I started Aetherium Nebula as an outlet where I can write more story-driven material that doesn’t relate to any spiritual path or occult study (or any aspect of real life for that matter).
I started Aetherium Nebula officially sometime in 2020. I decided to build a modular synth during covid, and my plan at the time was to write drone music exclusively on modular. Initially I was inspired by the deeply melancholic work of artists like bvdub, and I wanted to write minimal isolationist ambient that was meditative and captured a profound sadness. The name of the project is latin for Ethereal Fog and I spent quite a long time finding a name that I felt fit perfectly with the atmosphere I wanted to create. Even though the project has evolved, “Ethereal” and “Fog” are common threads that you will see extend throughout the project’s output.
Over time the project developed both in terms of music and aesthetic. Covid, paired with getting older, caused me to re-evaluate some of my views on life and I came away with the understanding that life will always be absurd…and so, despite aging we should just do whatever the fuck we want. In this spirit I decided to turn AN into a multifaceted project that incorporates all the things I love: music and writing, sci fi, cyberpunk, philosophy, the majesty and bleakness of outerspace, dark ambient, idm, industrial. Back in college during my formative years my twin creative passions were music and writing; however, at the time I felt like I had to sacrifice one in order to be successful in the other and I chose music. But I never lost my love of reading and writing and continued to do both in varying amounts of the years. Now I feel like I’m at a point where I’m fairly decent at both music and writing and therefore am ready to (finally) do a project that integrates both. I’m actually very serious about the writing portion, I’m almost more excited about that than the music, haha. I’m influenced by guys like William Gibson, Alastair Reynolds, and Hannu Rajaniemi and I am at least attempting to write at that level– I promise this isn’t just some clunky, awkward bullshit fanfic 😉
The debut album is called Glacialis Mundi and I am honored to have it released by the dutch label Winter-Light. I actually wrote this album during the period mentioned above where I was focused on writing long-form melancholic drone inspired by bvdub. It’s a lot of modular synth and experimenting with ways of writing ambient that were different from what I had been doing in the past with Worms of the Earth. The goal was to make it driven by emotional and story-telling rather than being based on something derived from the real world (the opening track title “The Ethereal Fog Of Dream” perfectly sets the tone for this, I think). The bulk of the album was written before I had developed the full scope of what I wanted the project to be, so in some ways it can be viewed as a standalone piece. At some point during its creation I had decided that I wanted the project to marry music and literature and I wrote the first version of the accompanying story which at the time was basically just the album translated into writing—meaning, it was there to provide a detailed description of album’s atmosphere but not to tell an actual story. After the album was finished and sent off to Winter-Light, I continued writing stories and music for the project and it naturally evolved as I got more ideas and figured out how all the different concepts I had for the AN universe started to fit together. Since the completion of the album, I’ve developed a significant interconnected mythos, so right before it released I went back and re-worked the story to solidify its connection to the rest of the universe. The story will make more sense at some distant point in the future when many more building blocks have been revealed…
What would you say are your strongest influences, be it dark ambient or other genres, and also when it comes to other things besides music?
With dark ambient, my biggest influence has and will always be classic Cold Meat Industry: Raison d’etre, Desiderii Marginis, Sephiroth, Atrium Carceri, etc. That sort of post-industrial version of the genre has always been the definitive “dark ambient” sound in my mind. My influences are quite varied, but the biggest dark ambient influence for Worms is definitely Herbst9 who I think is the absolute best at writing music that captures the feeling of an ancient, dead, spiritual civilization. Other than that, I mostly try to do my own thing and not follow too closely with what other people are doing.
My influences for Aetherium Nebula are mostly non-musical. Cyberpunk is the biggest influence – everything from Neuromancer to techwear fashion to anime. The other major influence is far-future & hard sci fi in the vein of authors like Alastair Reynolds, Greg Egan, Hannu Rajaniemi, Peter Watts, Stephen Baxter, Iain M. Banks, and Neal Asher. Reading so much of this kind of Sci Fi over the last couple years has changed my perspective on a number of fundamental aspects about life. Humans have not evolved to think in the long term, being that we only have a life span of 70 or so years, and when you start to actually consider things on the timescale of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years (this being important considering we’re approaching the cusp of being able to upload consciousness and taste immortality via existing in the digital/virtual realm) it really changes your perspective on what life is, what life could/should be used for, what things we should be focused on achieving, etc. You realize the pointlessness of certain modes of small-scale & provincial thinking, and that things like transhumanism and not destroying the planet are absolutely essential pursuits that contemporary society must be absolute idiots not to consider of the utmost importance. So yeah, philosophy is a major influence as well, haha. Anyhow, another big inspiration has been the accessibility of AI generated art. As much as people hate it (and yes there are absolutely aspects of it that should be hated), I’ve found it to be infinity inspirational for my other creative endeavors. I’ve been using Midjourney and Stable Diffusion for a while now to provide conceptual visuals which have been a critical element in fleshing out and improving my stories. All of the aforementioned has greatly helped me to construct and shape the Aetherium Nebula universe.
Last year you started your own label Arcane Dirge together with Henrik Karlsson of Seven Trees and Subverge. What were the primary reasons for starting up your own label, what are your goals and what do you hope to accomplish with Arcane Dirge?
I’m very much into the DIY ethos and running my own label is something that I’ve pretty much always wanted to do, however it takes years of being involved in different aspects of the music scene to acquire the knowledge, resources, and contacts needed to do it properly which is why it didn’t make sense to do in the past. It was something Henrik and I had talked about for quite a while before finally deciding to just go for it, and honestly I am thrilled to be in a place where we can do it and be at least semi-successful! At this point in our careers it makes sense for us to at least try it. We’ve both been releasing music for years which has allowed us to build up a strong list of contacts and to gather quite a bit of experience in all aspects of the scene: releasing and working with labels, working on zines, playing shows, promoting, getting and selling merch, etc. I’d also say some of our best knowledge actually comes in the form of the things NOT to do which we have painstakingly learned from our experiences. I feel that we work extremely well together and have the same vision for the label and our projects. Plus, there are aspects that Henrik is more familiar with and other aspects that I am more familiar with, so it’s a very synergistic relationship.
To speak from my personal perspective, my primary reason for starting the label is that I’m getting older and things (music/scene/life) have changed so much since when I started releasing music. Music sells less, labels are releasing less; most label heads are busy with a day job and other life things and there isn’t enough money in the scene to sustain full time label activities. Therefore, it’s harder to get on a label and you have to wait longer to be released. Everything in general is super saturated, people have short attention spans, and things move quickly. If you want to build a brand/project, you don’t have time to sit around and waste months or years while shopping albums to labels, waiting on a label to release it, etc. You have to keep up a steady schedule of releasing or doing something with the project and you have to be willing to adapt, try new methods, etc. A lot of labels are stuck thinking in the old ways, releasing and promoting in the same way as when they started or what other labels did when they were coming up. Having your own label gives you significantly more freedom in this regard. We can release whatever we want, whenever its ready without having to wait on anyone else for anything (Henrik found a really good CD manufacturing company so we hardly even have to wait on that aspect). We also have the freedom to try different release formats and take chances that other labels might not be willing to take on anything but their largest acts. I also enjoy being responsible for the success/failure of my projects. When doing it on your own you carry all the burden yourself – you succeed because of your own effort but you also fail because of your own effort. But in this regard you have the ability to assess and adapt rather than simply blaming the label without being able to learn from it or adjust future strategies. And when you succeed it’s much more rewarding because YOU succeeded on your own.
What is the current status of Arcane Dirge – do you have more releases in the pipeline and when can we expect to hear more?
We’re still just getting things started and getting the foundational stuff in place. It’s a challenge figuring out the best way to go about different aspects of running a label in this strange modern age, but we have a ton of plans for the label and future releases. In general, I think I speak for both of us when I say that it has been extremely inspirational, creatively speaking, to have absolute freedom with our releases. It’s definitely reignited the spark in me to work on new material and both Henrik and I have been working on quite a lot of projects over the last year that we’re really excited to showcase on the label. I think most of 2023 will be spent assessing, evaluating, and ironing out the kinks of getting a label started, but it’s going to be full steam ahead in the near future, definitely in 2024 and beyond. We have plans to deliver quite a lot of great stuff so stay tuned!
The Arcane Dirge compilation “Arcanum vol. 1” features the Aetherium Nebula track “Approaching Zcero Ver”. Could you tell us a bit more about this track?
Thematically, this track is part of the next full-length album which will fully get into the main Aetherium Nebula storyline. It’s a bit too early to speak on now, but the name will make sense once that comes out, haha. That album is actually almost finished and will see release in the somewhat near future.
Musically, I chose this track for the comp because 1. it fit the best with the other tracks and the overall vibe we wanted to conjure and 2. I feel that track is fairly representative of the next stage of the project – the feeling evoked by the dark, cosmic drones and the integration of percussive elements which brings in some of my IDM and Industrial influence (that’s a major component of future work). If I remember correctly, the basis for this track was experimenting with doing extreme time stretching on vocal samples and then loading them into Absynth as oscillators, which gave me some pretty cool results.
At some point during the creation of the Glacialis Mundi album Simon Heath (Cryo Chamber) gave me some technical advice on drones and reverb that got me thinking about trying a different approach to writing “drone” ambient. So, I wanted to experiment in the second part of the track: rather than relying on the standard single endless-release, slowly-evolving drone, I wanted to take a bunch of little fragments of sound that each move/fluctuate independently and create a synergy between them all that creates the same sort of feeling as one big singular evolving drone. Basically, I was just experimenting with ways to make my ambient music more interesting and dynamic.
As Worms of the Earth you have also done some psytrance releases – has the project changed direction or have you contemplated getting back to what you did previously?
Worms of the Earth always had a duality – I go back and forth between writing beat-driven albums and ambient albums. The beat-driven side of the project has indeed moved fully into the psytrance sphere. I was actually into psytrance back in high school and college before I became fully immersed in the industrial scene, so in a strange way it’s both a natural evolution and things coming full circle. There will be no more Industrial or Rhythmic Noise releases from the project; I’ve lost interest in the genre. From a production perspective, psytrance is significantly more of a challenge to write and I find it to be much more exciting and rewarding. I improved more in the year I spent writing Tunnels Of The Duat than I did in the preceding 5-10 years of writing industrial music. The bar for entry is much higher and I love having that reason to keep pushing myself to learn more and write & produce better music. And playing a psytrance festival is a million times better than playing in a dumpy little club, haha.
That said, I still obviously love dark ambient and will continue to write Worms material in this style as inspiration comes, as long as it makes sense to do so. Like I mentioned earlier, the cornerstone of the project is spirituality and dark ambient is, in my opinion, the best aural vehicle for interpersonal and ritual music. Things unexpectedly came together this year such that I am currently working on a new full length which will be a continuation of the Netjer album and it will further explore ancient egyptian themed ritual workings. It’s fairly far along at this point, and if circumstances pan out, it may see release later this year!