Artist: Onasander
Album: Dawn Metrics
Label: Winter-Light
Release date: November 2024
If you haven't heard of Onasander by now, there are two things you should know: (i) you're not alone, as neither had I until very recently, and (ii) now would be a very good time to correct that mistake. Onasander is an alias of the Italian artist Maurizio Landini, who has chosen a rather peculiar approach to making and releasing music, at least when it comes to dark ambient. As far as I've been able to tell, he has more than a dozen releases under his belt already, most of which have been collaborations with other artists in the dark ambient space (notably Alphaxone). Despite that fact, Dawn Metrics is actually Onasander's first bona-fide solo album, released on the prolific Dutch label Winter-Light, although it's clear from the very first seconds that this is no work of an inexperienced musician.
Onasander shares the name with (or rather takes it from) a relatively obscure Greek philosopher from the 1st century CE, who is best known for his treatise Strategikos, one of the most important primary sources for ancient Greek warfare and military tactics. Knowing this, you might be tempted into expecting strong martial and/or industrial elements in Onasander's music, but this is not the case at all. The title track opens with what I'd call a heart-warming homage to the Scandinavian dark ambient school of the early 2000s, with metallic clangs and dusty field recordings wrapped in a rich, deep drone, occasionally overlaid with subtle, yet unmistakably spacey synth passages. The album continues in much the same fashion, with a strong drone sequence providing the backbone to each track, but always integrating a variety of other elements to create a particular dynamic. Some tracks, such as Persistence in Space after Death, have a very monolithic, monumental quality to them, while others, like Signifier, allow themselves a bit more emotional range thanks to the interspersed hints of melody. Dead Central, on the other hand, almost verges on ritual ambient, with reverberating drums and heavily manipulated string sounds combining to create a captivating rhythmic whole. The album culminates in its last track Soldiers of Misfortune (a delightfully cynical title in itself), which reveals the full cinematic range of Onasander's music and serves as an excellent closer to this 45-minute journey through space and time.
After multiple listens, one impression that really crystallised in my mind is how adept Onasander is in co-opting various elements of dark ambient into a cohesive, flowing body of music. Whether it's rumbling drones, screeching metal, spacey synth sequences or just plain silence, Onasander manages to bend all of them to his will in creating an engrossing atmosphere. The album's storytelling quality and its sheer replay value are what puts it a cut above most other dark ambient releases these days, and with Onasander displaying such mastery of the various genre elements, I'm very eager to hear which direction he will venture in next.
Rating: 9/10
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