Dark Ambient: Black Sided Sun - Aurntengwl (2024)

77 / 100

Aurntengwl is a strong dark ambient release, deeply atmospheric though slightly uneven in pacing.

Black-Sided Sun, or Black Sided Sun, finally remains as the solo project of Yuri Ilyin, taking the ambient and related genres after previously playing progressive rock with several members starting in 2016, then shifting direction through the album Equinox: The Rite of Spring (2020). Four albums of this project have also been released under the ambient-focused label Neotantra, namely 2023: The Longest Road – Part I, 2023: The Longest Road – Part 2, Aurntengwl, and Static Apparitions.

Aurntengwl itself was released on April 18, 2024, containing eight tracks with a total duration of 59 minutes. Yuri seems to give the album and track titles based on the language of his home country, Georgia, because it is rather difficult to translate directly using Google Translate. For example, the first track “Avknin,” when asked to AI, gives the result “ავკნინ” which means "to shrink," while the album title has no found meaning. However, I did not continue to check the other tracks because there might be mistakes, although in fact it would be interesting to find out.

The style of Black-Sided Sun here is dark ambient with touches of electronic drone that stand out in “Nrein,” the synthesizer signal sounds in “Ltorel,” and the mixture of both in “Avknin” plus “Ohonr” with quite dense and noisy intensity. The series of journeys has a typical outer-space atmosphere that feels dark and empty, and then it is closed by a soundtrack-like piece, “Thessantrice,” which uses beats so it really fits like a curtain closer to a film.

Although ambient is a favorite genre, its dark side always requires caution to add into a playlist, and for this Black-Sided Sun album it is clearly recommended for fans of the well-known Cryo Chamber label releases and Steve Roach. The best candidates are held by two tracks with dominant spacey dark ambient pads: “Dromq” and “Arkesu.”