Album Review: Kindwave – The Ripperdoc’s Blade
Album Review: Kindwave – The Ripperdoc’s Blade
Written By: Dan Eachus
Release Date: May 14, 2025
Genre: Cinematic Ambient / Synthwave / Soundscapes
Introduction
In the smog-choked alleyways of a decaying metropolis, a flickering neon sign hums overhead: Ripperdoc Open – No Questions Asked. From here begins the second chapter of Kindwave’s evolving ambient anthology: The Ripperdoc’s Blade. This cinematic ambient suite is a brooding, immersive journey through synthetic identity, surgical transformation, and the soft echo of a lost humanity.
Much like City of Chrome, Kindwave continues their artistic devotion to mood-based storytelling, where each movement feels like a scene in a film yet to be made. The album is not a conventional ambient record. It’s a narrative in frequencies, deliberately structured to soundtrack a cybernetic rebirth. Across six longform tracks—“Prologue,” “Anaesthetic,” “Under The Influence,” “Recovery,” “Damaged Goods,” and “Epilogue”—the album unfolds like a guided descent into an operating theater hidden beneath the city’s neon skeleton.
1. Prologue
Opening with a vast and brooding ambiance, “Prologue” sets the tone with a dystopian serenity. Distant drones and subtle feedback hums feel like the sound of a world that’s constantly powered on, never asleep. You’re transported into a cyberpunk corridor of anticipation. It’s the calm before the incision—a synthetic breath, suspended in a dark room. The textures evoke both alienation and awe, the quiet horror of being fully conscious before surrendering to the blade.
There’s beauty here, but it’s jagged—like broken glass catching starlight. The emotional tension Kindwave captures is understated but immense. I absolutely loved how this album got started.
2. Anaesthetic
As the title implies, “Anaesthetic” is immersive in a different way—soft, enveloping, and numbing. The pulsing low-end takes on a biological rhythm, echoing the slowing heartbeat of a character going under. Swells of reverb-laden tones cascade like chemical waves, dulling pain and distorting perception.
This movement introduces a subtle duality: while soothing on the surface, it carries an unsettling undercurrent. The synthetic textures feel intrusive, as if something alien is flowing through your veins. It’s the point of no return—when consciousness slips, and the scalpel gleams. A track leaving you full of suspense, and ready for the next installment of the album.
3. Under The Influence
Here the album starts its transformation arc. “Under The Influence” introduces more fragmented textures, modulating frequencies that suggest an unstable internal world. The sound design becomes more complex, layered with shimmering pads and glitchy percussive stutters that hint at the fusion of flesh and machine.
The piece walks a fine line between hypnotic and hallucinatory. One moment, it feels almost warm—like electricity swimming through new cybernetic limbs. The next, it’s cold and clinical, like a machine probing your thoughts. It’s arguably the most abstract movement, symbolizing the chaos of being rebuilt while unconscious. This track was truly a mind trip.
4. Recovery
Emerging from the mental static of the previous track, “Recovery” is more focused, more linear. A deep drone acts as a stabilizing force beneath sparse melodic lines that rise and fall like respirator puffs. This is the aftershock—the moment when the character awakens, changed. Kindwave paints this state not as euphoric rebirth, but as wary emergence.
There is tension here, held carefully in the midrange. Sounds echo faintly, like voices in the back of a metallic skull. It’s a beautiful rendering of numbness, where familiarity returns slowly, but doesn’t feel quite right. The name implies you can take a break, but only just so.
5. Damaged Goods
The emotional climax of the suite, “Damaged Goods” is a dark spiral inward. Metallic screeches and synthetic static rattle at the edges of the stereo field, like inner voices or corrupted data packets. The protagonist may be alive—but at what cost?
The emotional resonance in this piece is staggering. It suggests disfigurement—not just physically, but mentally. Kindwave offers no resolution, only a haunting soundscape full of doubt, disorientation, and regret. It may be the best track on the album, standing as a twisted lullaby for the post-human condition. Hidden melodies of this track takes the listener to a different place, yet ready for the ending to come.
6. Epilogue
“Epilogue” closes the suite in a wash of melancholic ambience. The rhythm is gone, and all that remains are slow, ghostly drones and hollow echoes. This final movement isn’t hopeful—it’s contemplative, almost resigned. The transformation is complete, but the character feels less real, less human.
Yet, there’s a softness here too, like a fog rolling across a chrome wasteland. Whether the character has accepted their new form, or merely lost the will to resist, remains ambiguous. It’s a haunting and elegant ending to an emotionally intense suite. What an incredible end to a musical journey through the mind and space.
Final Thoughts
The Ripperdoc’s Blade is more than an album—it’s a cinematic sound sculpture carved in shadow and steel. Where many ambient records serve as passive mood companions, Kindwave’s work demands active immersion. Every frequency, modulation, and ambient texture is placed with narrative purpose. The pacing across the six movements is deliberate, allowing space to reflect and absorb.
In the age of algorithmically generated playlists and shallow sonic experiences, Kindwave delivers something deeply intentional, drawing from the aesthetics of Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, and Cyberpunk 2077, but with an emotional throughline unique to this London-based composer. It’s not about action or spectacle, but the internal reckoning that comes with augmentation—the ache of becoming something more (or less) than human.
For fans of ambient, cinematic, and sci-fi music, The Ripperdoc’s Blade is an essential listen. It’s best experienced in a single sitting, perhaps with dimmed lights and headphones, letting Kindwave’s world swallow you whole.
Listen on Spotify: The Ripperdoc’s Blade – Kindwave
Visual suite on YouTube: Kindwave’s Channel
Support on Bandcamp: kindwave.bandcamp.com
Follow the project on Instagram: @kindwavemusic
This may be just the beginning of the Kindwave journey—but The Ripperdoc’s Blade is already a landmark in ambient narrative music.
