https://ahcama-sotz.bandcamp.com/album/the-empire-of-time
Label: Bats & Cats – a digital release on Bandcamp – cat. BCD15. 2025. Belgium
1. Timeless Kingdom
2. Myastar
3. Nok’tarion
4. Kharuun
5. Eternyss
6. Obsidian Dream
In an age when kingdoms were measured not by land but by memory, “The Empire of Time” rose between the East and the West — a vast dominion where the sun and moon shared the same horizon. It was a realm of balance, of ritual and rhythm, where every moment was sacred, and every silence sang. From the East came the mystics — veiled in incense and shadow, keepers of celestial wisdom. Their temples throbbed with percussive near-eastern rhythms, drums echoing like the heartbeat of creation. From the West came the dreamers — clad in steel and faith, building cathedrals that reached for eternity. Between them, time stretched like a golden thread, binding spirit to matter, prayer to sound. It was here that the ritual soundscapes of Ah Cama-Sotz found their voice — music born from darkness, shaped by whispers of forgotten gods. Dark ambient drones rolled like distant thunder, while chanting voices rose from the depths, invoking powers beyond the veil of reason. The music became the empire’s pulse — a fusion of East and West, of flesh and shadow, of the temporal and the divine. As centuries turned and empires fell, the echoes endured — not as songs, but as rituals of remembrance, haunting the ruins where time once ruled. In every heartbeat, in every silence, “The Empire of Time” still breathes — its legacy carved in sound, its soul eternally alive in the dark, a sacred resonance. When the final eclipse fell and the empire dissolved into dust, its echoes endured in sound — the eternal beat of time’s dark heart.
Through Ah Cama-Sotz’s music, the empire lives still: in the whispering winds of the East, in the trembling bells of the West, in the pulse between seconds where all creation meets. Thus “The Empire of Time “ remains — not a kingdom, but a ritual, endlessly repeating, forever alive in the rhythm of the cosmos.
© bats & cats . cat. BCD15 2025. Belgium
© Ah Cama-Sotz + bats & cats digital
© Artwork by Ah Cama-Sotz + bats & cats
www.ahcama-sotz.com
www.discogs.com/artist/6799-Ah-Cama-Sotz
www.facebook.com/bats.and.cats.official
www.facebook.com/AhCamaSotz
All tracks written, recorded, mixed, produced and mastered by Herman Klapholz at Terra Inhibita VII & Illlektrik.toolz Mastering & Production of Sound and Music.
Available in 24 bit AIFF format for optimal listening pleasure.
credits: Miss Kitsch
© Ah Cama-Sotz. all rights reserved.
released December 5, 2025
all rights reserved
Reviews
ALTERNATION DARK CULTURE MAGAZINE (PL) – REVIEW by karo kratochwil
“The Empire of Time” is a universe carved from rhythm, shadow, memory – and the pulse of what survives us. It unfolds with a kind of mythic patience – not as an album demanding attention, but as a landscape revealing itself to someone who has finally arrived. “Timeless Kingdom” opens like a fragile invocation, a breath suspended between aeons, where voices rise softly, almost cautiously, as if afraid to disturb something sacred. It feels less like music beginning and more like a memory resurfacing, something that was always there, waiting under layers of dust and night.
From the first note, Ah Cama-Sotz invites the listener into a realm where beautiful, fragile, hypnotic incantations glide seamlessly into an even more hypnotic beat. This transformation is not abrupt; it feels inevitable, like water finding its path. And once it starts flowing, it becomes clear that the album is carried by his unmistakable rhythmic instinct – a dark stream running through every fissure, a kind of underground current, enriching the music, saturating it, making it so deep, intriguing, mystical, and strangely alive. Every track bears an exotic tint, not as ornamentation but as essence: echoes of distant places, forgotten kingdoms, and cosmologies older than language. “Myastar” glows like a constellation reflected in desert sand: cold, bright, unreachable. “Nok’tarion” moves like a ritual in motion – slow, heavy, magnetic, as if one were wandering through ancient stone corridors lit only by torches. “Kharuun”, named after an old Pakistani kingdom, carries the weight of rise and fall, of impermanence woven into the bones of history. It feels like crossing a threshold into the heart of the empire, where time folds into itself, indifferent and infinite. And then “Eternyss” breathes, a moment where the infinite becomes strangely intimate, like hearing the silence between two turning centuries. The closing “Obsidian Dream” descends into dark mineral depths, a dream not soft but sharp, glossy as volcanic glass, carrying both beauty and warning. It lingers like the afterimage of staring into a starless sky.
Listening to this album is like being drawn into a world absolutely wrapped in mystery; a world that unfolds subtly yet irresistibly, like smoke drifting through the air, like a story unwinding itself before your eyes, like watching stars on a desert night where silence becomes music and music becomes an enchantment of silence. It feels like stepping into an old, forgotten world, mythic and unreachable, yet strangely familiar – like a fairytale written in sound. And always, beneath everything, there is that beat, the pulse of the empire, the pulse of the earth, the pulse of something older than memory.
The album is also a profound meditation on time, that strange entity that eludes understanding. How can one capture time in music? How do you express something humans have tried to define, control, measure, and still fail to comprehend?
Time is layered, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, both relative and relentless. Its boundlessness and inevitability are reflected here with astonishing clarity. The music suggests kingdoms like Jharun – once alive, now dust – and the eternal cycle where people are born, rise, fall, and vanish, leaving behind echoes as faint as desert wind. It reflects the transient nature of greatness and ruin, joy and pain, all of it temporary, all of it caught in the flow of something larger.
Ah Cama-Sotz translates this philosophical magnitude into sound with astonishing grace. His music feels ancient and futuristic at the same time, a paradox only intuition can resolve. It is rich without excess, mysterious without obscurity, hypnotic without repetition. Most of all, it is consistent, immersive, and breathtaking in its depth.
“The Empire of Time” is not merely listened to. It is entered. And once entered, it becomes nearly impossible to leave.
Tracklist:
Timeless Kingdom
Myastar
Nok’tarion
Kharuun
Eternyss
Obsidian Dream
Release date: December 5, 2025
https://ahcama-sotz.bandcamp.com/album/the-empire-of-time
Author: karo kratochwil
Translator: karo kratochwil
Add date: 2025-12-05 / Music reviews
AH CAMA-SOTZ – The Empire of Time (Bats & Cats)
written by Nel Mertens 09/12/2025 for LUMINOUS DASH MUZIEKZINE
Sinds 1993 is de Belgische muziekproducer / dj Herman Klapholz het brein achter Ah Cama-Sotz. Daarmee koos hij niet voor de toegankelijkste vormen van elektro, wel voor één van de meest artistieke. Zijn creaties waarbij hij industrial techno en dark ambient ritualistisch laat versmelten, kan je zonder twijfel sonisch architecturale kunstwerken noemen. Op The Empire of Time worden zes tracks voorgesteld die langzaam opgebouwd worden tot intense bouwwerken van elektronische bezwerende soundscapes, van elk om en bij de 8 minuten.
In Timeless Kingdom heersen enkel nog schaduwen van de tijd. Het ritme wordt vervaagd tot in elkaar vloeiende bewegingen van geluid. Een muzikale plek waarin je warme herinneringen een plaats kan geven, maar die evenzeer beangstigende toekomstbeelden in zich verschuilen. In de verte van deze track hoor je de klokken luiden die de vergankelijkheid van de tijd aankondigen.
De ritmes klinken in Myastar dan weer erg duidelijk met natuurlijke percussie op trommels, die langs kille, ijle soundscapes wandelen. Een track die ons lijkt terug te brengen naar een geestenrijk van lang vervlogen Oosterse culturen. Mythisch.
Zelden hoorden we iemand percussieve electro maken, die even natuurlijk als kil beklemmend aanvoelt zoals in Nok’tarion. Bevreemdende soundscapes blijven galmen, terwijl de ritmes uit andere werelden ons in een trance voeren. Kharuun dwingt ons terug naar introspectieve sferen, met geluiden die zichzelf naar binnen toe keren, langs wereldvreemde elektronische details.
Eternyss brengt opwinding teweeg, want de ritmes dwingen ons dynamisch urgent in een ritmische trance met pulserende bewegingen. Obsidian Dream laat ons mee dromen waarbij het zacht fluweelrood langs het donkerste hard zwart meandert. Dit is hét album om te ‘verstillen’, zoals ze dat noemen. Zonder dat daar één greintje meligheid aan te pas hoeft te komen.
Ah Cama-Sotz 