When I created The Tartarus Times (a couple weeks ago), I did not have a clear idea of what it would be, but it quickly became apparent what I wanted to do. While there are many music publications in existence that give the opinions of more or less qualified writers, I did not want to serve as a tastemaker. I wanted to explain what is actually going on in the music, to the best of my perception.
When you think about it, music reviewers often give actually describing what’s going on in the music as a whole a back seat to selectively describing things they liked or didn’t like about the music, or just giving their opinions outright. The Tartarus Times strives to communicate what the music actually is, in terms of the concrete reality of what’s going on in the sound.
The Tartarus Times specializes in but does not limit itself to drone, ambient, and noise, and will review an album whether it has many fans or quite literally zero. Popularity or trends are not a consideration when selecting music to review, but The Tartarus Times wishes to also avoid the mentality where one simply tries to be obscure for obscurity’s sake. Reviewing obscure music is simply a way to give a voice to unknown music, and to document it.
The Tartarus Times is a tongue-in-cheek name, “Tartarus” being the place in Greek mythology’s underworld which housed those who had offended the gods in some way. The notion that the music reviewed is offensive to the gods or that listening to it is a divine punishment is not a serious notion, and should be taken as a joke.
Many of the reviews on the site use inaccessible technical language, and will probably resonate more with those familiar with the technical aspects of music and noise making. This is in order to give precision to the reviews; I understand that it is at the expense of accessibility.
I hope you enjoy reading The Tartarus Times!
Sincerely,
dryeyes4096
Addendum:
A few more words.
The Tartarus Times has a decidedly immature aesthetic to it. This is a bit ironic, but I wouldn’t want to be taken too seriously, so there it is. It’s also a bit of fun for me. One can picture the denizens of the deepest, most unpleasant part of the underworld sitting around with studio cans hooked up to laptops, listening to music and writing in agony to satisfy some sadomasochistic tendency inflicted upon them by offended deities.
That said, I will say this right out: this is not a heavy metal site. While I’m not opposed to reviewing an occasional album, the “dark aesthetic” of the black background has more to do with the darkness of the unknowing inherent in the initial stages of experimentation and discovery, as one seeks to pierce the unknown rather than simply expound what things are, as if one already knew. This false light, this pretense of self-importance and that one’s uninformed opinion is of value is something I wish to do away with on this site, as I believe it is an obstacle to genuine experimentation and discovery, which are things I value.
There is a favoring of parts, rather than the whole. This site favors describing the individual parts of a piece of music rather than expounding on the whole. While statements about what a piece is trying to say as an entirety can have value, and analyzing what all the parts come together to say in the larger context of society and the world can be meaningful, I also would like to point out that taking something part by part and demonstrating that it’s just sound waves configured in different ways can be liberating, and this is the approach taken on this site.
Enjoy reading!