Review: SÍLENÍ - The Lost Themes

Artist: SÍLENÍ

Album: The Lost Themes

Label: Self-released

Release date: March 2025

After a flurry of releases between 2018 and 2020 and mostly silence since, the mysterious Portuguese experimental dark ambient act SÍLENÍ (yes, the artist insists on the correct capitalisation and accents) finally returns with a full-length album - sort of. I say the latter because The Lost Themes doesn't feature wholly new material per se; rather, it is a gathering of tracks released across various compilations in the past five years, although remastered and unified into a single release.

Truth be told, if I hadn't read the above in the PR material I received about the album, I wouldn't have guessed that this was any kind of compilation. (And shame on me for not following the artist closely enough over the past few years, I suppose.) The Lost Themes has a very organic flow throughout, and it's obvious that Valter - the mastermind behind the project - put a lot of thought into how to organise the material to make it coherent and flowing. Indeed, after the first couple of tracks that are more-or-less standard dark ambient (by which I imply absolutely nothing negative), things start to get interesting on The Latent Realm and Remain Sane to the Hideous End, as the melodies that are typical of this artist's particular flavour of dark ambient start coming to the fore, and remain present throughout the remainder of the running time. Valter makes a point of describing SÍLENÍ as experimental dark ambient, and indeed, he shows throughout the entirety of this album that he's not afraid to take roads less travelled in terms of arrangements and sound design than is typically expected of dark ambient these days. While I personally think that the epithet experimental is superfluous in this case - since all dark ambient should be experimental by definition - Valter sadly has a point, as the genre has become somewhat slave to the clichés established by its forefathers, and not the idea factory that it was 20, let alone 30 years ago. That said, SÍLENÍ proudly stands on the edge of the classic definition of dark ambient, and is unafraid to combine soft piano passages with noisy drones, or string-driven melodies with ominous soundscapes, or even outright electronica as is the case on Artificial Chamber. Just as importantly, experimentation is not a goal in itself here; rather, SÍLENÍ draws on his obvious wealth of influences to weave them into a new artform, lush and menacing in equal parts, perhaps best exemplified by the short, yet poignant Light Is Gone. The second part of the album in particular feels very cinematic in nature, which is probably one of the reasons why I felt the overall running time was much longer than it really is. The guitar-driven closing track The Lone Phantom wraps up the album in a beautifully melancholic fashion, as the final chapter in a very rich tapestry of stories.

The Lost Themes is touted by the artist as a mere starting point for a string of new material to come, and I have to say that I'm very excited by that prospect. It's easy to listen to and to digest without being banal or derivative, and while the sound itself doesn't break any revolutionary new ground, the album is excellently put together and highly rewarding on repeated listens. A solid release through-and-through that merits the time of anyone into the more melodic side of dark ambient.

Rating: 8/10