Netherworld – Vanishing Lands (Album – Glacial Movements)
Genre/Influences: Dark-Ambient, Cinematic.
Format: Digital, CD.
Background/Info: Glacial Movements owner Alessandro Tedeschi strikes back with a new album of his own sonic brainchild, Netherworld. This album has been introduced as ‘a cry of desperation, it is the realization that we are one step away from the abyss’. It’s considered as being the most complex and dramatic work created to date by Netherworld.
Tedeschi founded Glacial Movements in Rome in 2006 and releases most Netherworld material through it. “Vanishing Lands” follows “Algida Bellezza” from 2019 on the same label.
Content: The opening part of the work sounds dark like the winter nights in the great north which served as a source of inspiration for the opus. Crystallene sound treatments are emerging at the top of dark sound waves while you next will notice overwhelming sound waves. In the background mysterious, angelic, female chants are resonating. Quite progressively the work becomes more wafting but holding on to a dark atmosphere.
+ + + : “Vanishing Lands” seems to be a pessimistic album for a dystopian world which is slowly becoming reality. Netherworld sends us a wake-up call by a dark sonic creation uplifted by heavy sound treatments and a strong visual appeal. I like both debut tracks for their overwhelming effect. The production also reveals great stereo effects. The last part is a bit different and more relaxing although a kind of ominous sphere remains.
– – – : I can’t say there’s a contracts between debut- and final part of the work but the best cuts are definitely right at the beginning.
Conclusion: Netherworld brings a new opus which indeed might be considered as one of the darkest of the artist mixing Dark-Ambient and Cinematic genres together.
Best songs: “Last Sunset”, “Thwaites”, “The Beauty Of Places Where There Is Nothing To See”.
Rate: 8.
Artist: www.facebook.com/Alessandro.Netherworld
Label: www.glacialmovements.com / www.facebook.com/glacialmovements
About Netherworld
Netherworld is the moniker of Alessandro Tedeschi, an Italian ambient and dark ambient composer from Rome. He works with manipulated fragments of classical music and field recordings, including ice masses, aurora-related sound material and Arctic wind recordings. Before focusing on his own label, Netherworld released through Fario, Angle Rec, Umbra and Taalem.
“Eternal Frost” was written, mixed and composed in 2004 and originally issued by Umbra in a hand-numbered edition of 99 copies; it reached Bandcamp on February 10, 2022. The Glacial Movements catalogue opened with “Mørketid” in 2007, followed by “Over The Summit” in 2011 and “Alchemy Of Ice” in 2013, his tenth full-length release and third for the label.
In 2017 Tedeschi collaborated with Eraldo Bernocchi on “Himuro” for the label’s Iceberg Series. “Algida Bellezza” arrived in 2019, a five-track album dedicated to his daughter and built around Arctic animal titles. “Vanishing Lands” followed in 2022 and the Bvdub collaboration “Equilibrium” in 2023. In 2026 he marked the label’s 20th anniversary with “The Hermit”, seven archival recordings from the early 2000s recovered from deteriorated CD-Rs and Minidiscs.
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