The other day I stumbled onto what very well may end up being one of my favorite ambient albums of all time. I happened to read about Blood Box in some blog and thought "eh whatever, that's a terrible name and I'm not bothering with this". I nearly scrolled down in hopes of forgetting Blood Box in the infinite dark seas of memory, but in the final moments I saw it was the project of one of the guys from Yen Pox. Being a big fan of Yen Pox, I decided to instead give this Blood Box thing a chance. So I checked it out and it was actually fucking amazing. Like, seriously fucking great. The album is called "The Iron Dream" and it sounds quite like older CMI stuff; very dark & brooding, lots of great atmospheric textures and sound effects, very dense and dynamic compositions. It's got what I can only described as an "old" sound to it, but I mean this is a good way. Supposedly, according to his myspace, he is releasing a new album on Loki Foundation by the end of this year. If that is true than I am buying it the second it becomes available.
http://www.myspace.com/bloodboxofficial
http://www.myspace.com/veilofsecrecyyenpox
So, after listening to that album about 30 times in a row, I decided to go back and listen to some Yen Pox. I've already documented my love of the Blood Music re-issue on this blog, and instead of listening to that album again, I decided to check out their previous release which was New Dark Age released on Malignant Records in 2000. That's fairly old at this point, but considering Blood Music was done in 1995 or so (don't feel like looking this up), I felt confident that it would probably not suck. Not only did it not suck, but, once you get past the silly cover, it too is fucking amazing. It is possibly better than Blood Music, or, perhaps more accurately, it is differently as good. It's less droning and more active than the ambient stuff on Blood Music (and it's not harsh like CD2 of the reissue). It's a bit similar to Blood Box (confused yet?) in that it's fairly dense stuff with a lot going on, great epic dark atmospheres etc; not just a couple drones for 10 minutes. I would definitely say this is Raison level stuff. Forget most of those albums people try to claim are "legendary" (cough cough Inade- 'Aldebaran', Lustmord - 'The Place Where the Black Stars Hang' cough etc), this is the shit that should be hailed as a landmark for the genre.
It's probably next to impossible to find either of these albums since theyre seemingly out of print, but if you ever stumble upon them I encourage you to buy them immediately.
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