LORDNIKON - Undercrypt
Written by KIZUNAUT
Undercrypt is the third full-length album from the self-declared Bay Area midtempo king, LordNikon. His previous works include Castle Blackheart (2018) in which he demonstrated a collection of competent darksynth tracks and Kvlt (2020) which saw him diversify his style by incorporating more varied song structures and atmospheric and cinematic elements. Undercrypt sees LordNikon moving further into soundtrack-inspired territory, this time with a more hypnotic vibe.
The album draws influence from various film soundtracks, including Creepshow, Beyond the Black Rainbow, Midsommar and Mandy. The album does convey its influences effectively while retaining an identity of its own. It is indeed more Ari Aster and less 80s slasher in its vibe, with mysterious, witchy arps and synth atmospherics casting hard to pin down sinister, esoteric moods.
There is a certain emotional space that LordNikon was aiming for when making the album. He describes it as "swimming in a pool at night...just drifting...in my head it feels like an ever-shifting color palette of blues and reds, greens going into pastel pinks and yellows that drift into a sea of black, like some kind of oil painting that never gets finished and never dries because there’s too many layers built up."
While music and how it is perceived is of course subjective, even before I heard of his aims and inspirations I felt the album to be quite oceanic, with the same light-dissolving-into-darkness feeling as the Beyond the Black Rainbow soundtrack has. For me, it was perhaps more of lights at the bottom of a dark ocean than a pool and an oil painting, but I feel like LordNikon has nevertheless effectively communicated a very particular aesthetic with this album.
While the cover art isn’t an oil painting that never gets finished, it manages to project an uncanny aura that fits the album quite well. There is simultaneously something very familiar about the fireplace and the painting, yet something off. Perhaps it’s the saturated colors, perhaps the way the fireplace is filled with candles and lamps, items that shouldn’t be there. It’s not hard to read it as some kind of stygian portal in the context of the album.
For music that is ostensibly rooted in darksynth, the album has actually a quite airy and subtle overall production that fits the more soundtrack-oriented style very well. There is patience and restraint within the tracks and often the traditional darksynth elements, the hard, dark bassliness, synth growls and sinister leads, more stalk than assault the listener. That isn’t to say that the album wouldn’t have it’s more in-your-face moments, and when they come in, they hit all the more harder. I highly recommend headphones for this album. The production is mostly very fitting and well done and a major step-up from the previous albums.
The album opens with the ultra-ominous Blood Tithe, a tense, swirling mass of orchestral instruments that is joined by a low, crunchy synthetic bassline. The mesmerizing, interplaying glissandos of sharp strings give the track an almost Shepard tone-like characteristic. It seems to build up, tense up, run away constantly, the instruments reaching for octaves they can never quite reach. After a brief pause drums join in, but the tension remains unresolved. A very unique and effective opener.
Draped In Soot begins with metallic, echoing bass synths and a mysterious arpeggio that are soon joined by drums and synth strings. The relatively slow-paced track lurks along, building up and stripping out elements along the way. An organ-like arpeggio and faster hi-hats come in, giving the track extra momentum. The organ arpeggio fades away, and the track races towards its ending which features a cool, sinister synth melody.
Soft synth arps and low, ultra-resonant droning synths open the next track, Sun Pit. A slow beat thuds alongside with splashes of guttural synths before a bass arp comes in and the track kicks into motion. A heavily crushed synthline comes to back up the bassline and then gives way to a mix of melodic synths. There is a kind of Egyptian flavor to it all. A brief interlude featuring sounds of birds singing in the distance serves as a bridge to the second half of the track that features a more open, slower sound, with low strings serving as the backbone. The beat plows over the strings, and a sharp synth sketches out a melody. The variation of the synth arp from the latter half of the first section comes in and the track slowly moves to completion.
Zero is a short interlude, featuring a descending melody of warm synth brass, low synths strings and a sound that reminds me of a distorted heartbeat. Glassy ambient synths come to loom in the background on the latter half of the track.Soon, only the repeating cascade of synth brass remains. A snippet of a soundtrack in search of a movie.
Collared opens with distant, choir-like synths before moving into a pattern dominated by thudding drums, a constant synth bass arp and occasional hits of squelchy, bitcrushed synths. The atmospherics from the intro haunt the background, occasional rattling noises and brief string passages drift in and out. A synth arp comes in, leading to a section with a secondary low synth melody interplaying with the basslines. A lead with a hollow tone paints a melancholic yet mysterious atmosphere for a while before turning into an arpeggio pattern that leads the song to its conclusion.
A series of witchy, heavily reverbed crystalline synths opens The Queen and the Sea. This pattern is soon joined by a heavy beat and an ultra-low synth bass sequence. A ticking synth sequence looms in the background, synth bass growls fade in and out of the stereo field and remote, hollow, vaguely choir-like synths sketch out a mysterious atmosphere. A synth sweep leads to an interlude with interesting, almost reversed-sounding synths, the distant atmospherics soon showing themselves more clearly. The beat and bassline come back and the bass growls become more prominent. A cool, bending, sharp lead sweeps in. The song arrives at its outro, the cool lead replaced by the witchy synths from the intro until only the reversed arp and distant choirs remain.
King opens with a very heavy pulse-width modulated synth bass arp that is soon joined by sparse, moaning hits of sharp, pitchbending synths. A hard beat pours in, the track rolls over like a black flood of darksynth basses, ominous passes of sharp synths and occasional splashes of bright, crystalline synths. Absolute crypt music. A brief interlude featuring a sharp string riser and a beat building in intensity leads into the latter half of the track which features a more uptempo synth arp that gives the track a surge of energy. Skittering hihats hurry along, juicy synth sweeps and a floating mass of atmospheric instruments give the track atmosphere. A big personal favorite from the album.
We Are Drowning opens with a tortured, creaking, granularized piano hit, it’s tortured remains looping over and over. Skittery string pizzicatos join, as does a sharp square arp. A brief buildup leads into the main body of the track, featuring a steady beat and an ultra low resonant, bitcrushed bassline alongside with the elements introduced at the intro. A higher pitched bitcrushed synthline comes in, partnering up with a warm, resonant synth that paints an ominous atmosphere. A sharper arpeggio and a shrill, bending synth string come in soon after. The track then sheds some of its elements, leaving the beat, the crunchy bassline and an assortment of atmospherics to play along. Eventually only the looping, granularized remains of the piano from the intro remain, and the track ends with a pitch-shifted, barely recognizable audio sample of a call from a clinic on how they are doing “everything they can do to protect the community”. The distorted call fades away, and thus ends the album.
LordNikon set out to do music with a very peculiar aesthetic on this album, and he has succeeded well in it. At 32 minutes in length, the album does not overstay its welcome, but it neither feels really too short. One or two tracks perhaps wouldn’t have fitted in, but as a whole, the album feels very coherent and complete.
The strong commitment to a particular aesthetic, the coherence and the soundtrack-like quality of it all however also make the album rather homogenous, with King being the most stand-out track. While all the tracks have things which set them apart from each other, they all operate within a quite similar tempo range and utilize somewhat similar motifs. The album is less varied than the previous one, and whether this is a weakness or a strength is a matter of perspective. For me, the album turned out to be a wonderful fix of heat-wilted, post-midsummer fix of occultism, but those hoping to find a varied listening experience or club bangers might walk away disappointed.
If nothing else, the album has proved LordNikon to be an artist willing to evolve and improve his sound and who can communicate a very particular, fresh, yet still dark and esoteric vibe with his music. Undercrypt is well worth checking out for fans of dark soundtrack-inspired music and people who want to hear a bit more atmospheric take on darksynth.
For more LordNikon, visit lordnikonsynth.bandcamp.com