Sunset Mission

Favourite songs: On Demon Wings, Prowler, Midnight Walker, Black City Skyline, Street Tattoo, Dead End Angels

Least favourite songs: none. This is one of the best albums I've heard on the post list, and one I wouldn't have discovered on my own. Thanks OP!

5/5

given the other reviews, I was hoping for something a little bit more evil

I really love this combo of midi synths (I think!) and sax (I think!). Dreamy and Lynchian.

oh interesting. I love an album title that hints what time of day it should be listened to.

What the heck is dark jazz?

edit: I have looked up the definition of dark jazz. And of course it's something I've already listened to. The Twin Peaks soundtrack. Also Barry Adamson's TWO albums on the original 1001, maybe the detail about the book that continues to confuse me the most.

Update: yeah na, this is a lot like Twin Peaks.

What's fascinating about this group in particular is that the members came from an extreme metal background, which helps my appreciation of what they were trying to make here. The deep, foreboding ambience evokes drone/doom metal more than any jazz subgenre.

While I commend the user who added this unique fusion, I have a feeling a future listen will be more rewarding than the one tonight, now that I know what Sunset Mission is. This time, I felt the tension between the part of my brain that likes ambient and the part that likes jazz. With ambient, I can sit in a mood or 'colour' a lot longer than I would other genres (see: Texan-based musicians Stars of the Lid. What a way to make two hours fly by). With jazz, especially something as sparse as this band is, I'm looking for different 'colours', especially if its going to be an almost 80-minute ride.
Throw in, I don't know, circular breathing, or some other weird shit. Jingle those keys, get back my attention!

7/10

HL: "On Demon Wings", "Black City Skyline"

June 4, 2026

Tää menee soimaan seuraavan kerran kun kaipaan kovaksikeitettyä tunnelmaa! Ihan hieno mikrogenren esittely. 3.5/5

I love jazz and I love ambient so this really hit for me. The extensive use of sax was great.

This band was my introduction to dark jazz back in 2018, a genre clearly inspired by film noir soundtracks. This is all atmosphere, smooth night music good for listening to or just having on in the background.

Gorgeous dark melancholic background saxophone jazz. It has a job, and it does it beautifully.

A neat vibe, but I can't help but yearn for the vocals of Alison Goldfrapp or Beth Gibbon, and the tone, in my opinion, was mastered by Akira Yamaoka for his work on the Silent Hill franchise. It would be foolish to call this album bad, but a couple tracks was enough to capture what the album was going for, and I was exhausted by the hour mark. Perfect for a nightime drive, surely. But it's midday and I'm at home playing Fire Emblem, so I don't think it was ever going to truly work out.

"Doom jazz" is a micro-genre that barely exists outside of Bohren and a handful of others apparently. This is music for people who think regular jazz is too upbeat and doom metal is too energetic. It's aggressively niche.
And I'm all here for it.

Not sure if such a niche album should be on a 1001 album list, but this is one of the best things I've heard in a while.

Insanely slow tempos, beats landing at exactly the right moment. My Dying Bride if they made noir jazz. The rock influences have disappeared, this is all atmosphere. Everything drags, everything lingers. An atmosphere of calm with an ominous menace underneath. The dark power of the saxophone in all its glory.

Even the aesthetic of the album cover is pure film noir/neo-noir

This isn't an album with standout tracks. You put it on and let it wash over you. It sustains its 50-minute runtime completely. So delightfully moody, balanced perfectly.

Punky gothy jazzy and weird. Not for me, but potentially interesting to some.

I'm a hard boiled detective and it's a rainy night..

Wow really interesting jazz album, very atmospheric really enjoyed this one I’ll hopefully come back to.