Review: End, Red Dress - The Brink

Artist: End, Red Dress

Album: The Brink

Label: Self-released

Release date: March 2025

If we're being honest, the avenue of the internet age has been both a blessing and a curse for underground genres. On the one hand, it has allowed countless artists to emerge from obscurity (pun intended, dark ambient fans!) and establish direct contact with audiences more easily than ever. On the other hand, it has created a flood of releases to such an extent that it's difficult for listeners to pick out which ones are worth their time, especially without the backing of a label, while artists have a hard time standing out in the noise. End, Red Dress (or end, red dress if we follow the artist's preferred capitalisation) with its wonderfully quirky and evocative name manages to do just that, however, and in more ways than one.

Brainchild of the Dutch artist Twan Bastiaansen, perhaps better known for his main project Klitink, End, Red Dress is a fantastic example of how ambient music can be so simple, yet so impactful. It's not difficult to discern the ingredients that go into it: warm, occasionally melodious drones, various forms of static, field recordings, elongated guitar passages and mere snippets of humanity, or what the artist beautifully describes as microsounds. What separates this release from a plethora of others in the same vein is the mastery with which these sonic threads are woven into an unfolding tapestry that somehow retains its singular character throughout the duration of the album, while never being repetitive. In fact, it becomes more and more amazing with each replay to realise the sheer scope of moods and emotions that the artist has been able to capture with such an (intentionally low) number of tools at his disposal. The track titles are just as redolent as the music they entitle, and the same goes for the album artwork, which features the actual wooden encasing of the physical release (or does it?) in a lovely meta-moment. While there's an undeniable tinge of melancholy running throughout The Brink and all its aspects, I couldn't help feeling a sense of optimism and shared humanity emerging out of it.

Despite its modest running time of only 30 minutes, The Brink is an absolutely beautiful emotional journey that invites you to embark on it time and again. It's an impressive testament to the power of sound, however minimal, and one of those releases that I would feel more comfortable classifying as poetry rather than mere music. As such, it gets my unbridled recommendation.

Rating: 9/10