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Beneath (or above) a  world full of melodic music with lyrics about love, hate, sex, violence, happiness, sadness, occasionaly a dog, a bar, a farm, and any combination of the above, there lies a world with no lyrics, no melody, and occasionally, no music.

This is the world of dark ambient.

It consists of some of the most terrifying and surreal soundscapes you’ll ever come across, and it’s more often than not [delivered quite violently] with harsh noises, unexpected sounds, and horrible emotions. Needless to say, the people interested in this genre of music are few and far between. The same applies to the artists. Theres an unfortunately small number of producers and record labels that create this subconciously intense noise.

Desiderii Marginis, with 9 full length releases and 10 compilation appearences  to date, is one of the most seasoned and deserving artists of recognition. Johan Levin, a swedish archaeologist at the meuseum of Ostergotland, started Desiderii Marginis as a solo project as early as 1993 as a means to release music that wasn’t acceptable to release under his main band (at that time), The Wounded Meadow.

Desiderii Marginis is deep, dark, and more than capable of changing your entire outlook on life, atleast while your listening to his albums. He has quite a few drone like sound scapes and some of the most powerful and emotion altering noises in the industry. His prodution is flawless and his personal expression is clearly articulated through his music.

Incase you’ve come across this article in search of dark ambient artists, I’ve put together a list which I’ll updating regularly, which you can find here.

Mark Powell. What can I even say about Mark Powell? Mark Powell is an incredible sculptor, to say the least. He hails from the down under (Melbourne specifically) and his sculptures are some of the most terrifyingly realistic looking macabre/occult style pieces I’ve ever seen. His use of gloss is nothing less than perfect, and whatever he uses for his organs and intestines is spot on.

It’s hard to tell weather these peices are small dollhouse size, or more life (death?) like. He does some free standing sculptures that are obviously pretty large, as well as some painting. But I think anyone who’s ever seen his work will relate his name to his sculpting more than anything.

Mark Powell actually has two seperate resources for his work. One is his website, http://www.markpowellart.com which has mostly pictures of the “Hell” set. Unfortunately the photos look like they were taken with the first camera phone ever made. The second resource, and the one with more work and *much* better photos, is his flickr account. I recommend checking out both.

Shannon Hourigan is a Los Angeles based Bachelor of Visual Arts graduate from the Queensland College of Art in Australia. She does some very interesting model shoots as well as some themed still life sets. Evidence is a fun set which makes use of some random autopsy/surgical tools, as well as a rather large bullet and some fake blood. You cant really go wrong with that.

At any rate her eye is great and her depth is awesome and her atitude is quite dark. She has some twisted ideas, and I love her for that.

I can across some John Santerineross art today randomly and I was pretty impressed. It’s some of the best dark art photography I’ve seen in a while that didn’t depend on heavy editing. He’s been called “The worlds leading neo-symbolist photographer of our time”, and for obviouse reasons. According to his bio, his inspiration comes mostly from his exposure to Catholocism and Santeria when he was younger.

I suggest checking out his portfolio. It’s very Giger-ish, only more of this world, and with less biomech influences.

… nevermind. It’s nothing like Giger at all.