Deprivation Chamber - "Urban Decay EP"

Artist: Deprivation Chamber
Album: Urban Decay EP
Year: 2010
Label: BFW Recordings [netlabel]
Genre: Dark Ambient, Drone
Website: http://deprivationchamber.bandcamp.com/














Basics:
Free EP from a new dark ambient guy. Don't really know anything beyond that. It has a cool band name and the album cover is pretty cool so I figured I'll give it a spin or two. "Urban Decay" sounds exactly like what you'd expect from a novice making dark ambient.

Good stuff:
-drones. pretty solid droning environments here. The drones are thick, dark and decent enough to be the foundation of a track. There are a few additional sfx / rhythmic elements / field samples happening besides just the drone, but not many.
- atmosphere. Despite being boring and straight-forward, there Deprivation Chamber is able to build up a sufficiently brooding dark atmosphere. The general mood presented here fits with the title of the EP.

Bad stuff:
- undeveloped. All the negative issues with this album can be attributed to how novice the whole thing sounds. The tracks are all very short and, while they have good foundational elements, they go nowhere and don't amount to anything particularly memorable. The elements used and the production are equally unremarkable. Two points go to the remix by Sarakus; as it is the most developed, and therefore best, track on this album. It takes the worthwhile elements of the original while expanding upon and fleshing them out greatly; adding in lots of background noises, distant melodic elements and subtle progressions, consequently turning what originally sounded more like a quick experiment into an actual song. I think Dep Chamber could learn a lot from listening to this, and hopefully he takes notes and understands why this is a much better track than his own.

Summary:
This album, while not offensively bad, is completely unnotable in the expansive sea of ambient music. Both listener and creator should ask themselves: why would you ever listen to this when you could just listen to something on CMI? Deprivation Chamber does have potential though, and I hope he keeps working at it. Fans of droning dark ambient might want to check out the Sakurus mix, as its free.

Overall Rating: 2.5/10