猫 シ Corp.'s Empire of Light is the farewell to his darkest project — and it sounds like deep space

Empire of Light (HR017) — released this past Thursday

Jornt Elzinga has been making music as 猫 シ Corp. since 2013, and the Dutch-Finnish producer built his reputation on two very different moods. The early records — Palm Mall (2013), Mall Music (2014), and the landmark collaboration Building a Better World with t e l e p a t h — sat squarely in mallsoft: warm, degraded, synthetic shopping-centre loops that made nostalgia feel vaguely sinister. Somewhere along the way, the project drifted further out. Hiraeth (2016) was the hinge point — the album's Welsh title means "longing for a home you can't return to" — and the years since pushed steadily toward colder, more spatial textures.

Empire of Light, released May 15 on his own Hiraeth Records, is where that drift ends. The label's own product listing calls it "the last and darkest ambient project by 猫 シ Corp." and says a new side project is on the horizon. 1 That framing matters: this isn't a pivot record, it's a closing statement.

The album draws its concept from Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos series — the four-novel science fiction cycle whose universe involves a planet called Hyperion, time tombs, and a creature called the Shrike that impales people on a metallic tree at the edge of space and time. An Instagram post designating it #AlbumOfTheDay describes the record as "a dark ambient exploration of deep space inspired by the Hyperion Cantos" and notes that "the atmosphere is dark." 2

You can hear that pull in the tracklist titles alone: T'ien Shan (8:16) references the mountain range that shares its name with a Hyperion location; The Void Which Binds is drawn directly from the cosmological concept in Simmons' later novels; Return to Thalassa — the track Elzinga himself flagged as a standout — brings back the ocean world from The Rise of Endymion; A Planet in Tears closes the sequence.

For listeners new to 猫 シ Corp., this is a harder entry point than Palm Mall or News at 11 — but it's a more emotionally honest one. The mallsoft records were nostalgic and comfortable. Empire of Light is neither. It's the sound of a producer wrapping up a decade-long project and walking it into deep space to see what's left when you strip out the warmth entirely.

The Hyperion Cantos angle also gives the record an unusual scaffolding. Most dark ambient is associative — it evokes something vague and vast. This one has a specific fictional cosmology attached, which means returning listeners who know the novels will find the track titles do real referential work, not just decorative signposting.

Physical formats ship within 14 days from Hiraeth Records. The black vinyl LP runs €24.95 and the gold marbled edition €29.95. Digital download (MP3, FLAC, 24-bit/48kHz) is available immediately on Bandcamp, where Elzinga has made Return to Thalassa available as a preview.