3 out of 5

Label: Fonolith

Produced by: Neil Scrivin

Neil Scrivin’s The Night Monitor moniker does soundtracks for supernatural events – reported, imagined – or, in this case, a score for a documentary on the same, positing a late 80s documentary on the haunted Clapham Wood which Dark Dominion supports.

Scrivin’s narrative is working against him a bit here, though: while, as an ambient experience, the album’s faded beats and 80s horror lifts are quiet immersive, the story they purport to tell (‘Invocation,’ ‘The Demonic Connection,’ etc.) falls a bit flat, with moments that seem like they should have their own momentum or theme content to sit in the background, or recycle a general mood and pace that hangs over the whole journey. It’s admirable that Neil avoids synthwave stereotypes, instead using his Phono Ghosts persona for funkier jamz, but that avoidance may be too forceful here, when the subtle unnervingness of some tracks, or the creep-around-the-corners atmosphere of others is so palpable for a fraction of the runtime, and the rest of the score surely effective for the imagined documentary, but not so much upon a standalone listen.

That said, if you remove the narrative, and even go a step more and don’t glance at the song titles – which lend tracks a bit more ominousness than I think they actually portray – Their Dark Dominion is lush, warm, nighttime listening. I’d still say stretches of it end up being a bit too subtle in their differences (about the midsection of each side of the LP), but even then, your ears can kind of hear those stretches as singular, extended tracks, and it works, with the heartbeat beats that emerge as the bookends to those more atmospheric runs effectively injecting moments of acuity, when you’ll wake up a little bit and look around the nighttime street upon which you’ve been wandering, scrying shapes out of the shadows.

Narrative or no, this is still a compelling and undoubtedly precise experience, even if that experience is a little shy of what I want. Kudos on the excellently evocative cover art, though. (And I’d say it’s good to listen to this on wax, if you have it, which adds just a bit more depth to the recording versus the digital.)