CRYO CHAMBER COLLABORATION – TSATHOGGUA 
If you want to complete the dark days of winter with some of the darkest music imaginable, the Cryo Chamber Collection series is a good way to go. Since 2014, Cryo Chamber, the label specializing in dark ambient, is continuously building on a series documenting all horrifying deities from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulthu family. After Cthulthu, Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath, Hastur, Yig, and Dagon, Tsathoggua is the ninth deity to be summoned.
“Tsathoggua is an amorphous, toad-like god-creature mentioned in the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon and the Commoriom myth-cycle”.
What is special about these releases (apart ftom its theme), is that all editions are a collaborative project of many artist that have released their work on Cryo Chamber. To name only a few of the 20 involved here: Atrium Carceri, Dronny Darko, protoU, Dead Melodies, Onasander, Alphaxone, Skrika, …
This is not a compilation of separate tracks, but a continuous work (2 x 50+ minutes), for which the artists “linked studios and sound for over a year so that they could work with each other on this deep collaborative exploration of the Mythos and Tsathoggua”.
The 2CD comes with a 20 page beautifully illustrated hard cover digibook; a digital version is included with the download. For a complete Lovecraft collection, you can also order the 19 cds in one go.
VARIOUS ARTISTS – HOMEWORK YEAR 7
The Taâlem label – ‘exploring the different sides of ambient music through 3″cd-r’s (and more recently through FLAC files)’ – has the tradition of ending each year with a Homework compilation for which they invite every artist that had a release on their 21 years of existence to contribute an unreleased track. This seventh edition in the Homework series contains no less than 62 tracks (and one video). Eleven hours of audio don’t fit on a 3″ CD-r, so this is a download-only release. And, what’s more: it’s Name Your Price too!
The overall connection of these artists is that they all fit the Taâlem curation, but with so many tracks from such diverse artists it’s virtually impossible to like áll the music presented here. Unless you are a musical omnivore. But even if you strip away the tracks you do not like, there will remain enough to fill a few CD’s worth of sounds.
In addition to the many lesser-known artists there are quite some familiar names, too. I only name a few here (but head to the Bandcamp page for the full list): Aidan Baker, Modelbau, Ben Fleury-Steiner, Moljebka Pvlse, Strom Noir, Bartosz Dziadosz, Shinobu Nemoto, Terje Paulsen, Rhucle, Arash Akbari, Martijn Pieck, The [Law-Rah] Collective.
And if 11 hours is not enough to satisfy your musical hunger: the first six editions of Homework are all still available, too.