Runes Order & Regen Graves release dark ambient album ‘Escape’
Runes Order & Regen Graves release “Escape”, a dark ambient and Berlin School album on Dark Vinyl, out 17 July 2026 on CD with horror-soundtrack guests.
Italian dark ambient project Runes Order & Regen Graves have released “Escape“, a new album on the German label Dark Vinyl Records, out 17 July 2026 on CD. The record pairs Claudio Dondo’s long-running Runes Order with Regen Graves, a member of the Genoa horror-doom band Abysmal Grief, and mixes Berlin School electronics with horror and thriller soundtrack elements.
You can stream the album and order the CD through the Bandcamp player below.
Runes Order & Regen Graves detail ‘Escape’
“Escape” is the second album Claudio Dondo and Regen Graves have made together, following “Falsche Fragen” in 2023. The duo build the record around Berlin School traits – minimalist repetition, long-form soundscapes and analog synth textures – and thread it with horror and thriller cues drawn from Italian film composers Fabio Frizzi and Claudio Simonetti of Goblin, along with John Carpenter. The result stays close to the deep, space-driven ambient that has defined Runes Order across three decades.
Argento of the Italian black metal band Spite Extreme Wing returns for the album, adding spoken-word and declamatory vocals; he last appeared with Runes Order on “The Art of Scare and Sorrow” in 2002. Further guests include Laura Agerli of Wuornoss Aileen, Labes C. Necrothytus of Abysmal Grief, saxophonist Alessandro Casoni and Beth P.
The album runs to thirteen tracks: “Snow On The House Of Spirits”, “Another Twisted Act”, “Escape From X-Bridge”, “The Sudden Death”, “Bury The Fetus”, “Nuclear Reactor R.B.M.K.”, “La Disintegrazione Delle Ossa”, “Vulnavia”, “Psychedelic Journey Of A Troubled Mind”, “Chi Perde Vincei”, “47-22”, “Reietti Senza Colpa” and “Come Fuoco Sull’Abisso”. Dark Vinyl issues it on CD.
About Runes Order & Regen Graves
Runes Order is the dark ambient project of Claudio Dondo, based in the Genoa area of Italy. Dondo started the project in 1988 as Order 1968 and renamed it Runes Order in 1992 with the cassette “The Dream Door”. Over the following decades he built a catalogue that includes “La Seduzione Del Silenzio” (1994), “Room 39” (1995), “The Art of Scare and Sorrow” (2002) and “Fase XIV” (2019), working across cassette, CD and vinyl and drawing on the cosmic and Berlin School tradition of Tangerine Dream, Faust and Klaus Schulze.
Regen Graves is a musician from the same Genoa scene, known as a member of Abysmal Grief, the Italian horror-doom and gothic band, and active with his own dark ambient and electronic work. Dondo and Regen Graves first joined forces on “Falsche Fragen” in 2023. “Escape” continues that partnership and moves it to Dark Vinyl Records, the German label that also released Runes Order material in the past, extending a project rooted in Italian horror-soundtrack atmospheres and long-form electronic ambient.
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