The Place Where Black Stars Hang

This is one of my favorite dark-ambient albums. Dark ambient is hard to describe. It is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, like the ambient elevator music (which is generally crap) we've all heard. This is music that is done on a synthesizer, but other than that, there's no similiarity. There is no percussion in this music and it is more just gentle sounds that are sort of rythmic and hypnotyzing. If you're new to this genre, I would get Selected Ambient Works, Volume 2, by Aphex Twin before getting this album, as it is a little more accessible. Not to say that's it's better, just an easier primer to dark ambient. This is the music I listen to when I really need to focus on something. Do not expect the simple melodies that are in all the other music we all listen to. These are "soundscapes," which are very different. There is a "melody" but it is complex and much more subtle. Another transitional album to help you get to the right place would be Stalker by Robert Rich and Lustmord. As far as Stars is concerned, trust me, this is like nothing you've heard before and its very exciting that they are re-releasing it as the album has been near impossible to find...

Do me a favor. Put this album on in a dark room, and just sit and think. Lustmord is here to put you in your place... to help you realize the vastness of the universe; the degree to which it is unknown, the degree to which we can't understand it. He does this with a beautifully spacial but intentionally limited sound vocabulary. This is classic, vintage Lustmord, full of his trademark 'whooshing' sounds and windy resonations... little abrasion or sonic clarity of any kind. The progressions of the pieces themselves are slow, simple and repetitive, yet everything about this album screams 'big'. It feels like nature... unsympathetic, but not hostile. A very meditative mood.

Calling this album part of the "dark ambient" genre is kind an odd choice in my mind. "The Place Where the Black Stars Hang" is neither negative nor positive. It will not scare you the way the Robert Rich collaboration "Stalker" or the more recent "Zoetrope" would. It's simply a canvas for existential and cosmological thoughts. It inspires creativity.

"Metastatic Resonance" is my favorite track from here for its heavenly whistling brilliance. However, all the pieces are wonderful. The original version of this album was all one track, and I feel that's the only way to listen to it... as a single, long-form composition. "Aldebaran of the Hyades" is a close second. It feels like standing in the house of God.

"The Place Where the Black Stars Hang" is a great introduction to Lustmord, and ambient music in general. Recommended for anyone with a taste for transcendental or spiritual experiences and a little patience.

I wouldn't buy it here on Amazon, it's more expensive than it has to be. I'd buy it from the Soleilmoon label (just Google it) in the newly remastered edition.

Brian Williams' Lustmord project is considered by many to be the pinnacle of the dark ambient genre; in fact, he's even touted as being its creator. As a fan of dark electronic music, I recently became quite interested, given his reputation. As I'm also a fan of so-called "space electronica", I was pretty excited to present my ears with Lustmord's cosmos-inspired opus, The Place Where the Black Stars Hang.

Suffice it to say I was underwhelmed.

I'm a relative newcomer to dark ambient, with most of my prior experience in the genre being early Delerium (which I adore), but I'm open-minded enough to always be on the lookout for new musical directions and experimentation. I must also confess that music is often a primary experience for me; I listen to music for its sake alone, devoting my full attention to it.

Black Stars is a well-conceived and professionally executed recording indeed; it's quite a technical feat. The fact that it still sounds as good as it does, years after its release, is proof that Williams is a skilled manipulator of sound and sonic spaces. My main criticism of this album, however, is simply this: not much happens during it. At 75+ minutes, it's quite long, and a couple of the tracks clock in at almost thirty minutes in length. Each. When you combine the length with the relative lack of development within the tracks themselves, you're in for - dare I say it - a primary listening experience that borders on the boring.

Take the second track, "Aldebaran of the Hyades" (noted nod to Robert W. Chambers). It starts with a repeated synthetic whooshing that changes speakers, back and forth. Other drones and hums wax and wane in the mix, rising and falling in slow waves. And that's basically it. For five minutes, it's great, transportative and evocative. But at ten, the repetition starts to wear. At fifteen, my mind went elsewhere, and the sounds faded into the background of my wandering consciousness. Once twenty minutes rolled around, I started thinking about the next track, but refrained from skipping ahead, in case of a grand finale.....which never came. The left-to-right whooshes soon faded completely, and I was left wondering what had actually happened during the track's lengthy running time.

I like ambient music because it can be a sonic documentation of a fantastic journey to undiscovered places, but for me, Black Stars evokes a series of still photos instead - actually, a single still photo might be more accurate. Once established, the palette never really changes, and you stand in one place, gazing into the featureless void, wondering if there's anything else out there. I suppose this means I'm not a fan of "drone ambient", but I wonder if there's a bit more to it than personal taste: to actually sit down with headphones, sober, and listen to this album in its entirety would take some serious patience. Perhaps my late arrival to this album has stripped it of some of the potency it undoubtedly wielded at its original release date, but I tend to doubt it; I don't think that it would have been any less repetitive twenty years ago. Others have said Black Stars is great to fall asleep to, which may serve to support my opinion, I suppose.....

I think I'm aware of the potential of dark ambient music. I do not have a molecular attention span, nor do I lack an imagination. The album Stalker, Lustmord's collaboration with Robert Rich, is far and away more interesting and atmospheric, perhaps because more happens within the confines of each track. I find early Delerium - Stone Tower and Spiritual Archives especially - to be works of highly effective dark ambient experimentation. Flint Glass is one of my favorite current artists, and I've recently fallen quite hard for the early works of raison d'etre (talk about evocative atmosphere). Forma Tadre's immersive album Automate has always been in high rotation in my collection, as has Thermidor's captivating release 1929. Even Stone Cross, a recent album from relatively unknown Slovak band Ambiguous, is an example of much more inspiring atmosphere, I think. And Lustmord's own side project, Arecibo, takes the foundation of Black Stars and applies it to a much more listener-friendly experience.

Music does not need melody nor speech samples nor rhythm to be effective, true, but without these elements, it runs a risk of losing the listener. There's a fine line between hypnotic and boring, and for me, The Place Where the Black Stars Hang falls more on the side of the latter.