🖤 anguish 🖤// a dark noise, harsh ambient playlist

2020 has been brutal. For a period of time after this pandemic hit, I found myself listening to a lot of really dark noise and harsh ambient music. It acted as a good reflection of my mood.

Listen to the playlist

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Inception

In 2019, I was by Lingua Ignota’s CALIGULA. I found that album sitting on my rotation nearly full time.

I started to do personal mixes around it, and eventually one started coming together that really captured my mood at the time. While I was already playing around with the inceptions of this playlist, most of the music was put in near the end of March and beginning April, when the whole world started to go to shit.

Look. I was already in a bad place before this happened. I had a stroke the year before. My job was in a scary place as a result, and then this pandemic made it even more tenuous as our business was right in the middle of the fitness industry. Then, in April, as a peripheral result of the pandemic, my father passed away. I’m barely scratching the surface of the whole shit storm. This playlist captured my mood very well.

It’s safe now

I’ve enjoyed dark noise music for a while. I’ve been hitting up noise shows for over 25 years and some good friends have been involved in some groundbreaking harsh noise acts.

While a lot of critical noise acts like Merzbow are publically a driving force for good causes, there was a lot of noise acts, particularly in the early ’00s, that were very problematic. Some were downright Nazis, but also the brutal misogyny was so prevalent it put me off that style of music entirely.

I’ve realized in the past 10 years or so, there has been a pretty strong resurgence that is better than it ever has been. I’m beyond proud of this and it makes it safe territory to venture into again.

Recommended listening instructions

I recommend listening to this without shuffle (sorry Spotify free listeners). While it’s probably fine on shuffle, I put these songs in a particular order on purpose. I also recommend turning on Repeat, as the music that comes up after the playlist ends can be sketchy. You may enjoy it, I found just the opposite.