“Light in Reality’s Shadow” by Desiderii Marginis

I wrote about Desiderii Marginis’s Live in Zagreb earlier this month, and what does Johan Levin do less than two weeks later? He announces a new album titled Tragedy Ecstasy Doom and drops the first song from it. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. To my ears, Levin is arguably the finest practitioner of dark ambience currently working today, and I’m always ready for more of his immersive soundscapes.

And “Light in Reality’s Shadow” is plenty immersive, even as it skews a bit from Levin’s usual sound palette. It’s still as dark and majestically ominous as anything you’ll hear all year long, but there’s a decided lack of melancholy chants and industrial clanks and clangs — which could be due to the album’s inspiration. As Levin posted on Facebook, “This is an album I’ve been wanting to make for a long time. An album of long, deep, immersive and meditative drones inspired by the work of american painter Mark Rothko.”

In any case, it’s still the work of a master. Listen closely, and you’ll hear Levin’s supreme control of his sonics, which he employs to create a slab of ambience that reveals new depths and details the more closely you listen to it.

Tragedy Ecstasy Doom will be released digitally on September 11, 2026.