Ruptured World

Ruptured World is the cinematic dark ambient project of Scotsman Alistair Rennie, who started his life in punk rock but became better known as a novelist before turning his hand again to music. His unique blend of chilling, bleak ambient with sci-fi narrative is exemplified by his 2018 breakout album, Exoplanetary. Born and brought up in the north of Scotland, where he developed a taste for mountaineering, Rennie began writing poetry and songs in his teens before turning to fiction. He started in a punk rock band at 12, then joined an indie outfit that had some local success. He then formed a gothic electronic/industrial duo which sowed the seeds of his later ambient works. After gaining a degree in literature from the University of Aberdeen, he worked as a painter & decorator and spent ten years living in Italy, where he climbed the Dolomites. Later he moved back to Edinburgh, where he earned his PhD in literature. After having his fiction published in various anthologies and magazines, including the famous Weird Tales, he published his debut novel in 2016, the weird fantasy "sword-and-debauchery" epic BleakWarrior, which combined metaphysical concepts with extreme sex and violence. Then, inspired by science fiction and the work of H.P. Lovecraft, and Orson Welles' The War of the Worlds, he created the dark ambient project Ruptured World, which combined deep, immersive drones, field recordings, and haunting melodies with spoken-word passages. The project's self-released, digital-only 2018 debut album, Frontiers of Disorder, caught the attention of leading dark ambient label Cryo Chamber, run by Simon Heath (Atrium Carceri). Rennie signed to the label for his second album, Exoplanetary, which arrived the same year. Inspired by films like Alien and The Thing, it was an ambitious conceptual piece, with narration by Rennie himself, relaying the dystopian sci-fi tale of a doomed human expedition to a distant alien planet. ~ John D. Buchanan