Kaya North – ‘Hunt’ Review

What does Kaya North sound like?

Primordial, ancient dark ambience.

The review of ‘Hunt’ by Kaya North

Straddling the boundaries of centuries and genres, Kaya North continues to be a source of excellence when it comes to dark ambient music. My personal preference is that if we’re going to do drone music, it needs to be textured, layered, and constantly noodling with my brain. On their 2025 album ‘Hunt’, we get all of those mixed into a fascinating, dense, tribalistic dirge.

Across its 48 minutes, ‘Hunt’ takes us on a nightmarish ride. ‘Spectral Claws’ opens the album with grizzled and warped drone synths, whilst distant tribal wooden drums march onwards in the background. Nothing sounds well; it sounds diseased. It’s like Silent Hill went to an ancient burial ground in a forest from medieval times. The central track is the 16 and a half minute ‘Bipedal Prey’. The percussive march from before is bolder now, and accompanied by war horns and disembodied choral synth pads. It’s both ethereal and deeply hypnotic, in a way that regurgitates dread from the bowls within. This is dark ambient and drone music done right, and apparently, it was improvised.

‘Trail of Bones’ feels more improvised because of how experimental and varied the soundscape is. You can hear wisps of taut strings and retro darkwave-styled synths ring out like a dark horror movie. The percussion now sounds like an industrial machine that is breaking down. Everything is detuned, or detuning in real time as it’s played. Akira Yamaoka would adore this piece as it sounds right out of Silent Hill 2. ‘For Worms’ is the only short track on the release. It is a three-minute razor-breathe piece that reminds me of Mongolian throat singing. That leaves us with ‘Black Megalith’, which specialises in a numbing synth monk hum that is being processed through all kinds of tape warping to make it sound as distressed and haunted as possible.

Kaya North, and much of The Eagle Stone Collective label that Kaya North is part of, all lean into desert and Americana drone and ambient music. However, Kaya North always goes back in time to a tribal or primordial era to create some existential dread and terror to bathe in. Dark, primitive, and primal. The apocalypse of the primative man of a textured, hellish beauty.

Recommended track: Pipedal Prey

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