Semi-Retirement from Music Journalism
No release date yet for the Ulf Söderberg interview and the book interviews, but they'll be published eventually. In the meantime, find me on Substack Notes.
Finally… a news update!
First, the interview update with Ulf Söderberg is in advanced stages of production. We still haven’t scheduled a release date, but the work continues on, and it will be published eventually.
Second, I am now in “semi-retirement” from music journalism for health reasons, so that interview will be the last one I publish. The Endarkenment archives will remain online indefinitely, however.
The outcome for my book manuscript remains unclear, but the interviews I conducted for the book will not go to waste. I’m working out another possibility for releasing this material, and I will share more news when I can.
While I’ve struggled with the dearth of sustainable funding options for creative labor throughout my entire writing career, my love for dark ambient music is as deep, fervent, and enduring as ever. As Simon Heath of Cryo Chamber once said so aptly, “the genre is only a mile wide, but a thousand miles deep.”
I still wish the dark ambient/drone music community had a high-quality, well-moderated online discussion forum for us to gather. There have been many, many attempts to build one over the years; I’ve made several of those attempts myself over the course of the past decade, as have my fellow music writers (as discussed in the cross-interview I did with Michael Barnett of This Is Darkness in 2019). But without a strong foundation of community ownership of the platform we build on, we’re forced to rely on the shifting sands of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Discord, etc., where there’s always a risk of being de-platformed, algorithmically deprioritized, or otherwise throttled at the whims of the behemoths.
All of the custom-themed dark ambient playlists I built on the Playmoss platform, for example, vanished without notice. Fortunately I saved the tracklists, and I’ve moved a few playlists elsewhere (Atmospheres, The Unsorrowing, and Blood of the Earth). But I’ll never get back all the time and labor I put in to help that music reach appreciative ears on Playmoss, and I have no way to contact anyone who followed me there.
That said, Substack seems better aligned with writers’ interests, and they recently introduced a new feature: Substack Notes. I’ll be experimenting with this feature occasionally in the coming weeks, so feel free to join me there. I miss comparing notes with other dark ambient aficionados! Consider it a way of softening my transition into retirement from music journalism. More info about Substack Notes is here and in their FAQ.
As for social media platforms in general: I won’t be returning to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, MeWe, or YouTube. I won’t be joining BlueSky or Mastodon either. However, you can find me on Warpcast, an early-stage web3 social media app built on the Farcaster protocol, where I’m slowly introducing a bunch of finance geeks and blockchain tech devs to dark ambient. It’s invite-only, but if you’re comfortable with that scene and know your way around an Ethereum wallet, feel free to request an invite and I’ll do my best to get one for you.
Thanks for reading, liking, commenting, subscribing, and everything else you’ve done to support Endarkenment and the larger music scene that birthed it. Drone on!
Your friendly neighborhood dark ambient music nerd,
-Danica Swanson