Album Review: Fimnur navigates dark ambience in 'Wintertide'

(Unreal Estate Records, cassette, digital)

In 1893, French composer Erik Satie wrote a mysterious piece called “Vexations.” The chart consists of a single motif, with instructions that it should be played 840 times in succession. No record exists of Satie ever performing the piece, which was expressly intended as background music. But he did coin a new term to describe it: musique d’ameublement — “furniture music” in English.

It’s unlikely Satie knew he had essentially invented a new genre of music. Seventy years later in New York City, American composer John Cage staged what is believed to be the first public performance of “Vexations,” which takes about 18 hours to play. In doing so, he helped introduce the world to what would be dubbed “ambient music,” a genre defined more by texture and tone than rhythmic or melodic structure.

In the years since, ambient music has evolved through incorporation and assimilation — like a mellow version of the Borg from Star Trek — to include a range of subgenres, from drone to electronica. Instead of weapons and villainous intentions, it carries a bag of superpotent sativa and a synthesizer, talk-singing, “Music theory is futile.”

Burlington artist Fimnur navigates the expansive landscape of dark ambient music, drawing elements from dungeon synth, itself an offshoot of early Norwegian black metal. And no, that doesn’t mean the artist’s second LP, Wintertide, is an ambient metal album. Quite the opposite. A follow-up to 2023’s Snowbound, the recording is a gelid and remote piece of work, the sonic equivalent of a lonely arctic research center encased in ice, its lights flickering through a blizzard.

While distinct movements and specters of melodies thread through the album’s 10 tracks, Fimnur’s expert use of space drives the record. At its best, ambient music encourages listeners to be more unfettered and nonlinear than when interacting with, say, pop music. Fimnur excels at this, crafting glacially sparse pieces such as “Dark Sky White” and “Caelestigris.” The two compositions feature synthesizers erecting chordal structures seemingly from candy floss while the melodies dance like snowflakes in slow motion.

Other tracks, such as “Soaring Amongst the Stars,” contain phantasmagoric rhythms derived from the blips of synths and gentle programmed beats, which sound more like rainfall than snare drums.

Wintertide, like Fimnur’s previous work, is an ode to Vermont winters, specifically inspired by “stargazing on cold nights,” as he wrote on his Bandcamp page. Ambient music may not top the Billboard charts or dominate Spotify playlists, so the marker for a project’s success is its ability to evoke a desired emotional state. Steely and hypnotic, Fimnur’s music induces the kind of zen felt by peering through ice-covered windows at dark pink, snow-filled skies and the ethereal silence of a frozen forest.

Wintertide was originally released online in summer 2024 but was picked up by German indie label Unreal Estate Records and rereleased on cassette last November. Order the tape or stream it at fimnur.bandcamp.com.