Select an
artist:
Artists whose names appear in bold have more
than
one CD reviewed. Scroll below the initial review to see more.
PLEASE
BE ADVISED: These archives go back as far as 2003. Many
links may be dead or changed, and many artists may no longer offer
the CDs reviewed here. If a link won't work, there's always Google.
Rudy
Adrian, Moonwater
For
pure, completely immersive ambient flow, it doesn’t get
much better than Rudy Adrian’s unspeakably beautiful CD,
Moonwater. Soft, consistently warm and fluid, Moonwater
drifts through landscapes draped in calming twilight and built
in quiet melodies. At low volumes, it’s soothing; in headphones,
it’s astounding. Adrian constructs gossamer layers of sound
and balances them steadily one atop the next, each arriving slowly
and precisely, each new step a perfect complement to what’s
come before. What makes it more interesting is that Adrian has
crafted this superb work using just one old synthesizer, a Yamaha
SY77, as its foundation. Particularly effective are the two closing
tracks, “Three Views of a Japanese Garden” parts 2
and 3. Part 2 features wordless chanting augmenting a meditative
melody while stray but well-placed piano notes fall like raindrops
onto lotus leaves. Part 3 floats with Zen-like grace, its component
chords fading slowly until all that is left is a rising string
melody, drifting quietly away toward dawn.
Deeply relaxing
and expertly crafted, Moonwater is a Hypnagogue
Highly Recommended CD.
I'd be hard
pressed to categorize this CD under the label of "ambient,"
as the artist does. Although A Thousand Years (secret identity
Greg Pearson) works with some soft electronic textures, most of
the songs here infuse the electronica with a solid pop sensibility
that truly lends it more character. You don't often get "hooks"
in ambient music, but they're here. "Land of the Living"
is an uptempo guitar piece that leads nicely into the more understated
(and ambient) "Angel Overcome." And "See the Spirits"
is practically begging to be rounded out with lyrics that would
net it some radio airplay. This debut CD is an excellent piece
of guitar instrumental tunes cradled in a strong understanding
of ambient tones.
Alpha
Wave Movement, A Distant Signal and Cosmology
Probably the
best thing I could do in this review is to tell you to stop reading
right now and just buy these CDs. You'd thank me, really. Because
Alpha Wave Movement (secret identity: Gregory Kyryluk) has turned
out a pair of eminently listenable pieces that neatly combine
spacemusic, chill, and solid electronic music.
A Distant
Signal is the mellower of the two, a comfotable ride through
space made funky with smooth beats laid under weightless synth
pads and melodies laden with velvety hooks. It glides back and
forth between soothing drifts and impulse-drive sequencer moments.
Standout tracks include "A Place of Peace," which epitomizes
the album's drift-to-groove style, and the gentle "Portal
Full of Stars," which ushers in the final few tracks of the
album, where AWM gives the listener a dose of suspended-animation
chill-out. And if I may say so myself, "Requiem for C.S."
should be making e-music playlists everywhere.
The tunes
on Cosmology also vacillate between upbeat and downtempo,
with a strong bend towards upbeat. It's an infectious piece of
work that sounds at once familiar and fresh. I'd run out of ink
trying to list the influences at work here. "Prologue Sequence,"
which opens the disk, offers a strong homage to mid-80s Tangerine
Dream. It's Berlin School-style perfection, launched into space.
The second and third tracks continue that feel before the album
dips just slightly into three pieces that touch a little too closely
on a mid-80s New Age-ish feel for my tastes. However, AWM recovers
nicely and finishes off by offering the listener a comfy starcruiser
seat for the voyage back into the spacemusic realm with the quietly
lovely "Distant Edens."
One
of the benefits of the DIY mindset endemic to the ambient/electronic
genre is that at any given moment an artist can reach into their
back catalog, pull out older or unreleased material, fire it up
on the computer, enhance it or clean it up or, in some cases,
finish it in the first place, and release the results in a new
package. Such is the case with the latest offering from Alpha
Wave Movement, The Regions Between. AWM (aka Greg Kyryluk)
has gathered work from 2001-2006 into an enjoyable suite of sequencer-motivated
spacemusic with just the right amount of beat and funk. Kyryluk
has dug up some lovely gems this time out. “Nucleogenesis”
takes off like a Tangerine Dream homage propelled by solid-fuel
sequencer work. “Rubicon” moves in on a slow, repurposed
70’s R&B love-song-inspired groove before picking up
a bit of flavor from spacey sequencer trills and some chunky bass.
“Desert Light” continues the low-and-slow feel through
a short-but-calming journey. The highlight here comes with “Distant
Nebula,” 10 minutes of signature AWM deep-space drifts blended
with a wealth of ear candy and subtle beats. These are always
welcome journeys when you’re riding with AWM, full of aural
imagery and atmosphere. Things get organic with the closer, “Metamorphic
Dawn,” where hand drums usher in angelic chords touched
with rumbling bass tones and a sense of unassisted flight.
I very much
like that Kyryluk has taken the time to offer some liner notes
on Regions... It’s interesting to get the artist’s
perspective on what he’s dusted off, what the inspiration
was and, in many cases, what equipment was in the mix. All in
all, a very good offering from Alpha Wave Movement and a superb
addition to his catalog.
When you get
a lot of CDs gratis, many of them get a listen or two and then
get used as coasters. For some reason, this CD continually rides
that ragged edge: not enough to be put into heavy rotation, but
not enough to toss out. The tunes here are a mixed bag, from drone-based
synth washes to moody instrumentals, but nothing the genuinely
sticks in the head. As a writer, I find myself thinking that many
of these pieces would make good soundtrack music. Alun is quite
strong at conjuring a mood or image through sound. And don't get
me wrong--there are some good tracks here. "Rain on Bamboo"
is a swirling, enveloping piece built on soothing Asian-style
flute; "Up the Sacred Mountain" and "Opium Den"
combine to form a sort of jazzy-meditative groove. Give Aggressive
Meditation a listen or two—it might turn out to be more
than a coaster.
Prior to receiving
this CD in the mail, I was unfamiliar with the work of Aperus
(secret identity: Brian McWilliams). Having experieced his music,
I fully intend to rectify that as soon as possible. Listening
to these five cuts, culled from alternate takes and portions of
songs from his full length CD, tumbleweed obfuscated by camera
failure, has a simply narcotic effect--knowing what it's
like leaves the listener needing more.
"Magnetism"
opens the CD with uncomplicated piano melody and minimal electronic
dressing,a piece lovely in its simplicity. We often talk about
influences and cross-influences in ambient music; this is like
genetically splicing George Winston and Brian Eno. It stands in
nice contrast to the starker, percussion-driven tribalism of "Earth
& Clay" and "Echo Canyon." The first rides
in on a funky bass groove, while the latter slips into pure slow
ambience with faint drums receding like night before dawn. The
closing track, "Vanishing Terrain," pulls many of the
elements of the other tracks together in a brooding, breathing
piece that firmly underscores the idea that, yes, you need more
Aperus.
There's only
one mis-step here: "Kaskaskia Canyon." A solely atmospheric
piece based on the sound of water dripping in a cave, it unfortunately
(to these ears) sounded like it was recorded in a men's room...if
you know what I'm saying.
But wait--there's
more! Pop this enhanced disc into your CD-ROM and you'll find
pictures and more music in MP3 format. You can check out the "experimental
mix" of "Earth & Clay" and an edit of "All
Good Things" from tumbleweed.
All in all,
hinterland is either a fine introduction to the music
of Aperus or a welcome addition to your Brian McWilliams/Remanence
collection.
This CD is
limited to 100 copies, and can be ordered online at AtmoWorks.
Aria
3 : Metamorphosis
The third installment of this opera/electronica crossover is a
lovely addition to the Enigma-school canon. Kicking off with the
soaring "Ombra Mai Fu" from Handel's "Serses,"
Aria 3 underscores classic vocals with a variety of styles from
fairly standard house beats to reggae and jazz feels. The album
hits its zenith with "Farewell," the closing to which,
to these ears, sounds like a magnificent blend of the end of Mike
Oldfield's "Northstar" and ELO's "Fire on High."
There are two instrumental tracks here that, while nice enough,
almost detract from the allure of the opera/groove pairing. Still,
start to finish this is a very listenable album. One warning:
I first listened to this CD while driving through New England
in the fall—putting this on while driving will make you
feel like you're in a high-end car commercial. And believe me,
that's a good thing.
Arrocata,
In the Distance
Performing
as Arrocata, Robert Straub offers a tour of the physical and metaphysical
vistas of his beloved southwestern American desert on In the
Distance. This is an engaging, beautifully constructed work
that eases along, unhurried, on textured drones that ripple like
heat shimmer. The disk opens with the mysterious, somber touch
of “Superstition Mountains,” where the cry of a hawk
pierces waking-breath drifts and a sparse drumbeat marks the cadence.
The mystery continues into “The Lost Dutchman,” which
floats along nicely as the rhythm picks up. Blurred, lost radio
voices call out briefly, intermittently. This track and the opener
have a certain solidity, a corporeal aspect, that will be left
behind as the disk moves downward into vaster spaces and a more
drone-driven sensibility—the movement from real to surreal,
from upper world to lower. That journey begins with “Weaver’s
Needle,” ushered in on a rumbling drone and the sigh of
desert wind before stretching out to reach for the secrets at
horizon’s edge. From there the journey curves inward on
the minimalist tracks “Wandering Windows” and its
even calmer followup, “Mogollon Rim”—which starts
with a sudden upwelling bass thrum that then pares and smoothes
to meditative, windsong quietude. This is the sound of sand shifting
on a dune beneath a midnight breeze. Straub brings the disk full
circle and returns the listener to the upper world on the closing
track “Sedona.” It echoes, appropriately, the feel
of “Superstition Mountains” with grim chords evoking
the solidity of rock and the beautifully barren desert landscape.
Fading gently to its end, the disk practically begs for continuous
play. In the Distance is a superb work that makes its
journey fully and well. Straub uses a restrained hand and allows
the pieces to move and grow organically with not so much as a
bump in the path to impede the flow. Arrocata’s In the
Distance is a Hypnagogue Highly Recommended CD.
Dwight
Ashley, Discrete Carbon
In his liner
notes, Dwight Ashley explains that he was somewhat reluctant to
release the songs on Discrete Carbon to the public because
he felt they were personal--"a tension release." Let's
all be glad he changed his mind. Discrete Carbon is elegant,
challenging, and superbly crafted. Ashley spans a range from soft,
melodic pieces to lazy sine-wave drones to harsh, compelling work
that even its creator questions "whether it truly qualfie[s]
as music."
Case in point:
the third track, "Katalepsis." Here Ashley submerges
a slow-moving, almost mournful synth melody beneath a wave of
unrelenting static. Musically it is a truly relaxing piece, and
while the mind and soul recognize that, the nearly intrusive barrage
of shifting white noise forces a constant analysis of whether
or not it belongs and what it actually adds. It is, without question,
effective--as are all of Ashley's sonic choices. Every track has
embedded elements that force the listener to take notice, along
with subtler nuances that enrich the experience.
Throughout
this CD, Ashley artistically intertwines music and non-music in
an intoxicating, narcotic blend that commands deeper listening
for fuller appreciation. It is dark, moody, and relentless in
both its difficult complexity and its shadowy beauty. If you are
up to the challenge and can approach composition with an open
mind, Discrete Carbon will not disappoint.
Following
up on last year's excellent solo release, Discrete Carbon,
Dwight Ashley returns with Four, a guided tour of the raw,
grim places at the edge of musicality. With each new album--indeed,
each new piece--Ashely proves himself a master of stark beauty.
Four is a smooth, slow-moving body of work that reaches
down into the hidden places in your psyche and pulls something
out. There is no passive listening here; every piece pulls the
listener down and in. "Machina ex deus" starts with
a rasping, trapped-animal snarl but wends its way into fludiity;
"Stranded II" is painted in perfect hues of unease and
worry but stays engaging with its tonal beauty; "The Art
of Standing" brings a sort of dark Zen sensation, the feeling
of being not entirely alone in your mental quietude; and "The
Mighty Fallen Rust in the Sun" is a splendid balance of menace
and majesty set on breathy drones and ripples of low chords.
I'm consistenly
amazed by Ashley's ability to create music that feels intensely
personal while at the same time carrying a distinct sense of distance.
It's like standing back, unseen, and watching a painter cry as
he creates.
A superb second
effort from Ashley, one that gets a lot of replay.
In the liner
notes to his new release, "Ataxia," Dwight Ashley wonders
if its asking too much for someone to sit through this sort of
material without breaking something. True, "Ataxia"
is dark--as in very--and at times aggressive, but that's what
you end up with when you take the destruction wrought by Hurricane
Katrina as a muse. The upside of such inspiration is that, as
with all of Ashley's previous releases, the depth of emotion,
however grim, and the layers of sound are the reward for a sometimes
gritty listening experience.
This is classic-style
ambient, more sensation and evocation than outright musicality.
It very quickly moves into the realm of immersive music, where
one piece flows with precise ease into the next with no real breaks
to pull the listener up from its depths. Thus, "Ataxia"
is the sort of CD that has to be considered as a whole. And the
whole is signature Ashley, a glimpse inside the artist that combines
soft and understated floating melodies with rough-hewn, sometimes
industrial-tinged backdrops and a hearty dollop of dissonance.
As a personal
note, I love that every Ashley CD ends with a short solo piano
piece that seems utterly detached from the rest of the work. It's
like a palate-cleansing sonic sorbet after the main course.
So is Ashley
correct? Is it too much to ask for listeners to sit through "Ataxia"?
No. But asking them to not keep going back to it to explore its
depths? That would be asking too much.
The first
word that comes to mind when considering Ashley & Story’s
latest release, Standing + Falling, is "grace."
Not just the grace of the music itself, although it does move
with unhurried presence and the rhythm of calm breath. Rather,
it’s the CD taken as a whole—the construction of each
individual piece, the play of the elements within each, and the
relationship between tracks—that evokes the overarching
sense of grace. The disc opens with the slow dance of "Obstinato,"
where a gentle strings-feel melody meets electronic twiddling,
setting the tone for the pieces to follow. That combination of
playfulness and deep e-music sensibility pervades the work.
Take, for
example, the transition from the gentle flow of "Poppies
[for Irene]" into the blip-and-funk cool of "Chicken
Pot Pie." While utterly different in form, there’s
an oddly complementary feel to placing one after the other. It
happens in perfect reverse order in the movement from the twangy-bass-and-beat-driven
title track into the warm and dark current of "Ohmen."
Standing + Falling closes with the 20-minute-long "Dysnipsia,"
a gorgeous exercise in drifting minimalism that truly exemplifies
the work’s quality of grace.
Across the breadth of this CD, Ashley and Story
build exquisite landscapes loaded with tiny, constantly moving
details. Each is rich in emotion and nicely balanced between dark
and light, simple and complex.
It’s
worth noting that the collaborative efforts between Ashley and
Story on this CD took place largely via electronic media, with
each adding elements bit by bit as the pieces evolved. The seamless
melding of musicality and atmosphere from each pays a great tribute
to the natural ease of their compositional chemistry.
[A
note from The 'Gogue: It's been brought to my attention that the
purported intent of this disc is completely contrary to what I've
written below. According to the liner notes, the disc is "encoded
with Alpha Waves" and should stimulate the brain. As you
will read, the disk had quite the opposite effect on me. As I
note, I found it very relaxing. And I had not read the liner notes
prior to writing the review, which is rare for me, so I had no
expectation that the disc would have any theoretical "effect"
before I listened to it. Hypnagogue reviews are always based on
the effect the music has on me as a listener; they are my honest
assessments of my listening experience. I stand by what's written
below, and rather expect each individual listener's mileage will
vary.--js]
There’s
essentially no way to listen to the duo Austere’s new CD,
Pulse, and be able to comment cogently on the entire
thing. Because at a point somewhere around the 15- to 25-minute
mark, your brain simply surrenders, having been lulled and massaged
into complete relaxation, and just starts interpreting the sounds
as a direct order to go into a deep theta state and stay there.
It will, however, retain the memory of warm, droning synth pads
of misleading simplicity that waft easily and steadily onward,
never in a hurry to do anything but not hurry; eon-long chords
convincingly demonstrating how easy it is to simply be, only ever
changing slightly, and then just to become more definitively what
they had been in the first place—gentle and relaxing. Pulse
is ideal background music and perfect for sleep-listening. Pleasant
dreams.
I’m
not sure that it’s possible to chill much more than you’re
likely to while listening to Patrick Balthrop’s Autopoetic
without simply dissipating into a cloud of incredibly relaxed
mist. Culling together, in his own words, “microbeats and
microsounds” that range from 10 to 100 milliseconds, Balthrop
crafts complex bits of sonic sculpture, with these tiny blurts
of sound punctuating waking-dream keyboard washes to create percussive
elements that feel half-imagined even as they impart an irresistible
urge to groove, just slightly, with the sound. The effect is so
subtle that giving in to it feels like an involuntary reflex.
The disk opens with the comparatively forceful “Shout Along
the Highways,” which drives forth under the power of a steady
low-tone beat. This slides into “Inside of Me,” where
Balthrop willfully commits what some would consider the venal
sin of electronic music: he adds vocals. But the simple, repeated
phrase, brought forth in a soft and sleepy voice, is absolutely
indispensable to the piece—it’s just one more instrument,
calling to mind vocal tracks in songs by Beanfield or Deepfried
Toguma. The vocals slide in again during the ethereal pleasure
of “Throwaways,” to equally solid effect. Once Balthrop
gets going, the tracks slip effortlessly one into the next, with
just the slightest shift in intent and execution creating marked
differences in tone and feel—the child’s-toy melody
of “Throwaways,” the manipulated guitar samples in
the elegant track, “The Night Rose,” the simple sine-wave
roll of “Chasing Through the Cornfield.” Autopoetic
is a perfect exercise in the art of subtlety and understatement.
It’s engaging, thoroughly enjoyable, and a very likely candidate
for endless repeat play. Patrick Balthrop’s Autopoetic
is a Hypnagogue Highly Recommended CD.
Matt
Borghi, Olagra
I was on the fence about reviewing Matt Borghi’s latest,
Olagra, for Hypnagogue because when you get right down
to it, it’s not an ambient/electronic album per se. But
Borghi’s such a mainstay of the genre and this disc so comfortably
falls into an intriguing grey area, digging its own niche and
demanding attention, that it warrants a review as much as it warranted
repeat listens. What’s most attractive about Olagra
is that it feels as if it’s been made with a very alluring,
wabi-sabi sort of planned imperfection. There’s an engaging,
rough-hewn honesty to Borghi’s guitar playing and—on
several tracks—singing. It’s there in the sense you
get of a couple of friends getting together in the basement with
their instruments and firing up the four-track to see what comes
out. (Yes, I’m sure Matt’s a bit more high-tech than
four-track, but it’s a metaphor. Work with me.) Borghi’s
not a great singer, but he’s clearly emotionally invested
in his lyrics, and his soft-edged voice delivers them in an intimate
stage whisper, forcing you to get up close to listen. Borghi spreads
out stylistically on Olagra. The opener, “Deep Side of Tomorrow,”
is a low-fi, contemplative song with a solid folk/indie edge and
extremely subtle electronic treatment far off in the background.
“Sincerely, April,” with Bryan kay on drums and Phil
Smith on bass, is the first track to bring that basement-jam sensibility,
thirteen minutes of guitar noodling and beautifully simple, artistically
sloppy drums. It’s three guys feeling their way around an
idea, and it’s a great listen. On “Daydreams,”
Borghi works with journeyman intensity through a light jazz riff
for a couple of minutes. It conjures a great mental image of one
guy and his guitar late at night, playing from the gut and totally
without pretension. Olagra shows Borghi’s ambient side as
well, on drifty tracks like “Manistique” with its
distant-echo guitar textures, and the emotive, soundtrack-worthy
“White Shoal Point.” The disc closes with the episodic
“Break Harbor Asphalt,” which neatly wraps together
all the styles and inspirations that have come before. Fifteen
minutes long, it begins as a gentle, meditative guitar work. After
a brief break of near-silence, it goes experimental with a tangle
of semi-familiar electronic noises and the music of a child’s
toy over a slightly ominous drone. Another period of silence,
and it’s into a reprise of “Deep Side of Tomorrow”
made richer and larger with additional instrumentation and a bit
more abandon on the guitars. Olagra is an interesting
ride through the diverse panorama of the multitalented Borghi’s
musical and mental landscapes. Kudos again to Matt, as I mentioned
in the review of Manitou's All Points North, for packaging
his CD in an attractive and unique handmade and hand-printed cover.
Other artists would do well to check out Matt's The
Hand Work Press for their own discs.
I am immersed
in a warm, comfortable current, drifting downward but unworried,
unhurried. Above me particles sparkle and dance in the blue-filtered
slow-motion sunlight. Shadows of life course past me, close enough
to touch. I am breathing, and in breathing, I am the water. I
am....
....listening
to the brilliant, minimalistic beauty of Aquarium of the Deep
Sea by Brain Ballet (secret identity: Hidemasa Kondo), and
I cannot help but become wrapped in the music. Each short piece
is a newly explored world of quiet synthesizer, elegant piano,
and deft electronic treatment, all nicely carrying, in various
ways, the CD's fluid, aquatic theme. There are no sharp edges
here, none of the drone-requisite darkness that at times seems
to clog the genre. Nothing here but a series of fully realized,
watery dreamscapes that fold readily one into the next for a truly
relaxing musical experience.
So dive into
Aquarium of the Deep Sea. You'll emerge refreshed and
ready to go right back in.
There's
no need to set aside time to listen to John Broaddus' 4 at 18.
Start the CD and the music will, of its own accord, manipulate the fabric
of time to carve out a place in which you'll comfortably exist as these
four ambient pieces, each a touch over 18 minutes long, move lazily around
you. This is a CD of glacial-drift chord changes and sleeping-breath swells,
a subtle journey with no determinate destination.
The
album's strength is in the varying textures of the four pieces. (There's
a temptation to refer to them as "movements" in this slow-motion
symphony.) "One" grows from an insistent drone borne on a stellar-wind
backdrop; this is the one that creates that temporal hiding spot, slows
the breathing and begins the drift. "Two" opens with a resonant
pulse that at first threatens to undermine the ease of the first track.
The sound initially borders on intrusive, if not a bit tough to listen
to, but as it evolves, it begins to shimmer and take on a certain liquidity.
Late in the piece there is the sensation of perceiving the sounds through
a curtain of water. "Three" moves the emphasis from ethereal
to tangible; the solidity of a temple bell adds a sense of rhythm to the
flow. And "Four" slides back into the drift, familiarly combining
the the dark drone that opens the work with the wavering tones of "Two"
to close the circle and bring the voyage to a pleasing end.
All
in all, this is a CD of discreet beauty that gets better with
each deeper listen.
For more information, visit www.parnassusnump.com This release [was to] be followed in Spring 2004 by the next
in the series, "21 at 3."
Calm
Spirit Music, Various
I
hope that the folks at Calm Spirit Music will understand that
I mean it as a compliment when I say that their CDs are likely
to do quite well in the New Age store/ bookstore/massage therapist
market. Tranquil + Spirit I, Tranquil + Body I,
and Caress of Light are good straightforward relaxation
CDs that make for quite pleasant, nonintrusive background listening.
Tranquil + Body I is the most "ambient" of
the three, an hour-long, quietly drifting piece that flows along
like a quiet sonic stream. Of the three, it's the one you'd most
likely be listening to during your massage. Caress of Light,
by multi-instrumentalist Stefan Mikel, is an enjoyable blend of
styles, picking tints and hues from straight-up New Age, jazz,
and more. Mikel's playing is engaging and enjoyable, particularly
his guitar work. Tranquil + Spirit is a gentle New Age
disk that simply begs to be enjoyed in a candlelit room with a
good white wine close at hand. It's superb end-of-day music. "The
Secret Heart Sacred" from this disk is a gorgeous bit of
work. So if you're looking for calming and accessible music, the
offerings from Calm Spirit Music will fit the bill quite nicely.
If your doctor
says you're not getting enough funk in your electronic music diet,
what you require is a healthy dose of the latest offering from
Canartic. Headphone Test is a too-cool blend of trippy
dub, smooth ambience, and the occasional burst of garage band
abandon. Stepping out with the smooth and bass-flavorful dub ease
of "Grape Meringue," Headphone Test proceeds
to wander through a poppy field of psychedelic stylings engineered
for the aforementioned earwear, all arranged in a neat rollercoaster
of uptempo/downtempo. Among the highlights here are "Signal
Fire Cut," where Randall Peterson's guitar slashes like a
sonic machete over a tremolo backdrop, bringing the feel of a
bunch of guys just cutting loose in dad's garage; and "Magenta
Sky Over Detroit," which floats dreamily over a guitar riff
that feels lifted from a 70's R&B love song. The bass on this
track is solid enough to eat, and tasty enough, too.
The only downside
to this CD--and this is just a preference thing--is the near overuse
of vocal samples (including, correct me if I'm wrong, a clip lifted
from Rundgren's Something/Anything album.) A little less
in this area would make Headphone Test nearly indispensible.
As it is, it's a disk you need to experience.
This CD is
packed with the stuff that makes for great ambient music: a coy
and sometimes wayward musicality, a vacillation between silky
downtempo grooves and beatless explorations, and a periodic table's
worth of stray sonic elements folded into the mix like candy into
ice cream. Slip in angelic vocals from Elisabeth Lahr, and what
you end up with is compelling listening.
Circular jam
17 quality tracks onto this CD, each melded neatly end-to-end.
The first half of the CD stays in the beat-driven realm, offering
up delectable cuts such as the jazzy, vibraphone-toned "Time-Slip"
(featuring Lahr), which laces itself into "Jazz Kid,"
with a bebop bass line that reads like the theme music for every
tough punk in every late-50s movie about a misunderstood rebel.
Later in the CD the beats get scaled back and the duo (secret
IDs: Bjarte Andreassen and Jostein Dahl Gjelsvik) easily blend
in darker, more atmospheric and trippy pieces such as "Classico"
and "Cricket." The album closes with the beautiful,
sequencer-driven "Arp," an excellent ending for a such
a great ambient effort.
All in all,
A Glass Darkly is a smooth and enjoyable sonic ride in
classic ambient style--and well worth checking out. Go to Circular's
Web site at www.circular.no.
Jim
Cole & Spectral Voices, Innertones
There
is music that you listen to, and there is music that you exist
within. Innertones, from Jim Cole & Spectral Voices,
is an example of the latter—music that peacefully and completely
surrounds and envelops you. From the first soft note there is
an air of sanctity and sanctuary, and that feeling pervades the
entire disk. This is music that takes you, briefly and happily,
out of the world. Culled from recordings made between 1994 and
2005, Innertones features Cole and company singing, unaugmented
and unaccompanied, in an abandoned, 120-foot-high water tower.
Between the pitch-perfect harmonies, the graceful pace of the
songs, the intriguing textures of polyphonic singing, and the
natural resonance and sustain of the water tower, Innertones
develops, across it course, into something akin to a meditative
mass for the ambient believers. The sound falls perfectly between
hymn and chant. It is uplifting, soothing, and inspiring. Innertones
is a superb low-volume experience, the beauty of the pieces quietly
filling the space with an inescapable serenity. In headphones,
however, the full richness of the sounds truly comes through—deep
throat-sung bass rumbles, angelic highs that spiral toward the
top of the tower, lingering echoes twisting easily into each other
in the air... even the simple drawing of a breath between notes
becomes an element in the purity of the flow. While there are
six distinct pieces here, Innertones is a singular experience
that needs to considered in its peaceful entirety. You simply
must come and exist within it, just for a while, to understand
how unique and moving it is. Innertones is a Hypnagogue
Highly Recommended CD.
Creature,
Mechanical
I try to do reviews in an orderly manner. When a disk comes in,
I burn it into iTunes, then put the disk at the bottom of my review
pile and I try not to write the review until I unearth the disk.
In the meantime, music from that disk may come up in shuffle when
I’m listening to the ’pod. And sometimes I’m
so eager to write about it that I almost break my own rules and
pull it out of the queue to get to it sooner. Such is the case
with Mechanical from Creature (aka Stephen Haunts). As
soon as a song from this disk popped into my ears, I was infected.
Creature constructs intriguing tracks that meld EDM sensibilities,
house beats and sound snippets created through "circuit bending,"
where new aural oddities are created by re-wiring electronic children's
toys. The result is a disk of intriguing cuts filled with a wide
array of sounds that get cut, chopped, de- and reconstructed,
all under the cadence of body-swaying rhythms. Solid piano work
on several tracks lends a sedate, classical flair under Creature's
throbbing electro-constructs. Tracks such as "Vitamin,"
the title track, or "Daisy Cutter," with its repeated
phrase, "disco bombing," pulse with energy and drip
enough melty ear candy to satisfy people like me who thrive on
the work of an artist stitching together bursts of noise and clatter
and creating truly listenable music out of it. Check the thunder
of the distorted drums that kick around Yaz-esque bop and slow
chords in “New World" or the subdued but tactile raw
power of the all-too-brief “Magenta.” The sixteen
pieces here almost feel too short, but they pack so much into
two to four minutes that it's hard to fault Haunts for his brevity.
All in all, a great CD for those who need cool beats and lots
of interesting sonic surgery with their electronic music.
Typically
when I encounter an electronic artist who's new to me, I go into
that first listen hoping I'll hear something new or challenging—something
that prompts me to re-think my view of what the genre has to offer.
But sometimes discovering a work that is pleasantly familiar,
with an undercurrent of newness, can also be enjoyable.
Which is where I found myself upon listening to "Communion,"
the third album from
Current (secret identity: Robert Solheim). A workable if slightly
uncertain-of-itself melding of chill-out and techno, with an edge
of late-80s electronic sensibilities tossed in for good measure,
the album has a welcoming feel to it. Hints of Tangerine Dream
(particularly in the first few moments of "Ghost Trip")
and Jean Michel Jarre peek out of the arrangements. And just when
you're starting to think you've heard it before, Current adds
his own touch to move it just left of typical.
This is an album of comfortable, accessible grooves wrapped around
spacey atmospherics. The shorter pieces, such as "Sign/Alien,"
"Sign/Human," and "In the Frame" tend to stay
on the deeper, softer side, contrasting nicely with the upbeat
tech of the longer tracks. While Current's label is pushing "Ghost
Trip" as the CD's standout song, the best tracks here are
"Sunday Sunburn," which shifts effortlessly from an
easy chill to a high-BPM joyride, "Alone with Company,"
which features some ear-catching processing, and "Minor Abstraction"
with its jazzy backbeat and easy flow.
There may be no big surprises in "Communion," but Current
has created a smooth, enjoyable listen that will find a home in
any chill-out or spacemusic fan's collection.
While
this extended piece has all the earmarks of spacemusic, it is
perhaps more accurate to refer to it as "time music."
Here the composer isn't launching the listener into the depths
of the cosmos; rather, he's offering a look at the space between
moments and the possibilities that exist therein.
Working
from what he calls a "pedestrian melody," Crowell proceeds
to stretch the tune across the full 60-plus minutes of the CD,
with the changes between notes a matter of minutes rather than
milliseconds. That gap becomes a thematic exploration and gives
Crowell time to pull and twist the melody in any number of quite
satisfying directions.
I
have to say that at first I worried. The CD opens with a repeating,
downward-twittering synth run that smacks of early analog music,
and it left me wondering if I was about to be "treated"
to a Jean-Michael Jarre tribute. But as Crowell buries that establishing
theme under a growing, smooth pulse, the true intent rises to
the surface and the exploration is underway.
Like
its Suilven Recordings companion Jura, this is superb
backdrop music, but it also tends to suddenly swell up in majestically
bold passages. In quieter moments, drones linger like ripples
on a lake and the subtle shifts in tone and intent come like undisturbing
wake-up calls, bringing your attention back around to what's been
going on while you were busy zoning out to this superb piece of
work.
Listening
to the music of DAC Crowell is a lot like peering deep inside
the workings of a tiny, possibly alien machine where nanoscopic
gears move in strange, fascinating concert. Sounds turn sounds
turning images, turning impressions, making something of nothing
and still, no matter how hard you try, you cannot figure out how
it happens so seamlessly.
And so it
is in this latest untitled outing, teamed with fellow minimalist
Kurt Doles
The centerpiece
here is "Rain Temple Garden," a 40-minute excursion
into a luscious drone ambient zone touched with the rhythm of
light drumming and cave-echoing liquid drops. The elements, insistent
and unwavering, mix into a perfect trance cocktail that sustains
the journey. Even at this length, the piece never seems to lose
focus or intensity. There's something constantly going on, and
it's continually fascinating. This is virtually perfect ambient
music. (It's astounding to think that this piece, according to
the CD sleeve, has been around since 1994. Ten years was certainly
too long to keep it in hiding!)
The two other
pieces, Crowell's solo piece "Yankee Ridge" and the
collaborative "In Midsummer" are airy pieces that showcase
Crowell and Doles' mastery of this alien machinery. "Ridge"
is the more hypnotically minimal of the two, while "Midsummer"
blends the sound of a simple, distant piano with a slow, lovely,
and slightly mournful melody for maximum beauty.
Luckily for
listeners, this is just the first of a planned series of collaborations
between the artists.
A blurb on
the back of this CD refers to the music as "aural sculpting
meets the beat," but that doesn't quite come close to describing
this infectious blend of funky grooves, downtempo luster, and
a playfully experimental sensibility. cyberChump (secret identities:
Jim Skeel and Mark G.E.) know the value of a body-bouncing bass
line and how to blend it with floating melodics for a smooth ride--check
out the CD's title track, a fine example of a perfect sonic cocktail.
They also know when to darken things up, as with the grim "Helium
Device" and "Vulcan's Forge," or to slam the listener
with solid drum 'n bass, as in the excellently assaultive "River
of Doubt," one of the highlights of this very good CD.
Scientists
also slips in plenty of interesting rogue sounds, from a
twangy slide guitar to nearly buried jazzy horns making brief-but-effective
cameo appearances in the midst of pure electronica. Each track
is expertly crafted, with sound-layers existing in perfect symbiosis,
and the flow from one track to the next is flawless. Perfect for
up-front listening or an inobtrusive ambient experience.
I
must admit that I wasn’t prepared for cyberCHUMP’s
Sankhara. My last exposure to the duo of Mark G.E. and
Jim Skeel was their excellent outing, Scientists in the Trees,
a delectable pastiche of upbeat electrogroove that I described
as a “perfect sonic cocktail.” By contrast, Sankhara
is a meditative blend of gently drifting synth washes accented
with guitar, flutes, and voice. It is warm and calming yet thick
with the kind of aural detail that is the mark of a cyberCHUMP
recording. Each of Sankhara’s ten pieces start
at the surface, with elements that warrant notice, and then slowly
dive down and mellow as they spread and flow. The quietest piece
here, “Waking in the Dreamtime” is a subtle masterpiece
of understated drone. Dark in spots and constantly shifting, it
pares itself down to a veritably unwavering low tone and quiet,
hypnotic drums. “Contemplation (A Cadence of Thought)”
uses drums to create a similarly reverent feel. In fact, much
of Sankhara has a certain sacred-music timbre to it.
Low-volume repeat play is a must for this CD—as it rolls
on it becomes a lulling sonic mantra. Kudos to the lads of cyberCHUMP
for mixing it up so very well.
For purposes
of this review, I'll set aside my opinion of the title of this
CD--though as a writer, it's hard to do so. Luckily, this CD delivers
such a deep, variegated, funky selection of tracks that it's been
in heavy rotation at the Hypnagogue home since it arrived--despite
the clunky title.
But I digress...
PTLKW
is a solid, Middle Eastern-flavored ride, relying heavily and
wonderfully on hand drums and flutes, that changes gear often
enough to keep it interesting while showcasing the band's talents.
"Gdansk," the 15-minute suite that opens the disk, slides
with ease from graceful synth-strings to beat-focused and back
again, keeping a repeating theme going to solidify the whole.
"Shakyamuni" is tribal hypnotic, raising the BPM's and
the blood pressure before "Invocation" slows it down--almost
too much. (Hold that thought.) The real core is this CD is the
combo of "Caravan to Dharamsala" and "Border Highway."
"Caravan" bleeds turmeric and saffron, blending diverse
elements with deep funk. On "Border," Cybermonkey cuts
loose, with a club feel from the hand drums and slashes of razorwire
guitar. The volume, at this point, goes up. The only real
downside I can see--and this may be something I just have a peeve
about--is the overuse of vocal samples. "Invocation,"
as I said, is a good piece, but the narration (for lack of a better
word) that goes with it just gets to be too much. It impedes the
flow. But again, this may be a matter of personal taste.
So ignore
the title and give this CD a try. Can't judge a book by its clunky
cover.
Kudos to producer
Dave Dale for realizing that the most intruiging instrument on
this recording is Donna De Lory's astonishingly versatile voice.
Stretching from a Kate Bush-style wispily ethereal quality to
the throaty agressiveness of Paula Cole, De Lory takes a set of
six mantras and, through the joy and range of her voice, transforms
them into songs for the soul. It's clear that De Lory is not merely
singing the chants herein; she is embracing them, and that devotion
floats over each track. "Ganapati Om" starts out sparsely,
with De Lory's voice over harmonium, and then the beats kick in
and the upward ride to ecstasy begins. Two homages to the goddess
Shiva, "Om Namah Shivaya" and the closing track, "Samba
Sadashiva," which gets my vote for the best on the
CD, are sinuous, deeply sensual pieces where De Lory's voice takes
the texture of wet silk and wraps around the listener. "He
Ma Durga" is a slow exultation, a spiritual updraft that
drifts gently toward the heavens. Here, De Lory sweetly hits some
of her highest registers. "Govinda Jaya Jaya" introduces
that Paula Cole rasp and rides on a slightly twangy guitar groove
for a breathtaking journey. Finally, the addition of one simple
strike of the gong (or temple bowl?) to announce the end of this
funky meditation is a lovely addition to the overall feel of the
piece.
This is one
of those albums that went onto the CD player and simply wouldn't
come off. Play it and you will find yourself chanting
along with De Lory, and you'll feel better for having done so.
dreamSTATE,
Passage
Before delving into the intriguing journey that is dreamSTATE’s
Passage, take a few moments to read the liner notes. The music
here was composed as a companion piece to an art installation
based on a poem by Lynn Harrigan. That poem follows the descent
into madness of Aina, an Irish famine refugee who immigrated to
Canada with her family in the 1840s. As such, what begins as a
calm outing soon descends, by design, into a challenging grimness
of sound. Without the backstory, the change can be disconcerting;
with the backstory, it is involving and nicely structured.
Each piece
has its own character and intent, each well developed. But there
are standouts.
The opener,
"Crossing," nicely sets the tone on a liquid drone that
wavers in and out of minor chords. It is shadowy, in a foretelling
way, but at the same time subtle and quieting. And it leads easily
into the brighter, more hopeful "Clearing." The keening
that forms the backdrop of "Captive" is chilling-- tortured,
ghostly wail, thin enough to be wind, that blends with the drone
rather than overriding it. That same sense pervades "Gyre,"
lending it a tactile sadness that creeps slowly into the soul.
As I’ve
said before of pieces that are attached to other works of art,
be they performances, installations, or otherwise, the highest
compliment I can give is to say that the music makes me want to
see the art that goes with it. Passage easily gets that compliment.
In fact, after several listens, it has become a Hypnagogue
Highly Recommended CD.
William
Edge, 76 Lightyears and Discovery: Edge of the Universe
The over-riding
impression I got from listening to these CDs was that while the
artist has many of the elements of ambient/space music at his
disposal, the ability to effectively blend them is lacking. The
pieces don't slip together readily; they jostle one another for
position and dominance--piano trying to muscle in alongside electronic
treatment or various elements working against a beat, for example.
While at times approaching a decent listening experience, more
often than not, the approach is deflected by that lack of subtlety.
Others may find Mr. Edge's work more accessible. Samples are available
at his Web
site.
Ephemerid,
Lost in Dust
Elegant and
sensual, Lost in Dust is a worthy heir to the Enigma/Deep
Forest lineage. Indeed, it's sort of "Enigma goes Middle
Eastern, with danceable beats wrapped around delicate, masterful
piano work and whirling vocal samples. It's music to get utterly
lost in, music to surrender to. It is, quite simply put, a soundtrack
to an inevitable seduction. Ephermerid should put a disclaimer
on his CD that he is not responsible for any losses of innocence
that occur while this music is playing. It is potently passionate.
Among the
best tracks here are "Falling from Grace" and "Silk
Floor"--although, truth be told, there isn't a single piece
here that isn't a joy to listen to. Moods and tempos switch from
song to song without ever losing the cohesive Middle-Eastern thread
that ties them all together. All in all, a wonderful piece of
work.
Floating
Mind, Deep Visions
It’s hard to give an in-depth review on this CD because
every time I listen to it, I get hypnotized. But in a good way--not
in that "wake up in a bus station north of Toronto with no
pants and a new tattoo" way. With a combination of soft drones
and repeated tones, Floating Mind creates some transportive tracks
with enough additional elements to reward deep listening--but
as a whole, the CD is inconsistent. "One Day" is the
best piece here, a sonic mantra that’s like being set adrift
in some electronic void, watching magnetic stars twinkle and burn.
"Stellar," which follows, brings the listener back with
a smooth spacemusic feel and grounding beat. "Transformer"
is just the opposite, a charging, grinding, and ultimately satisfying
piece with a grim, industrial edge. Unfortunately, what is set
up in the first half of the CD starts to break down somewhat late
in the game. The tracks "Robotik Life" and "Keep
on Moving" depend too heavily on a repeated computer-vocal
sample. On their own, they aren’t bad (again, the sample
becomes a bit much), but thrown on top of the much more subtle
tracks preceding them, they come as an intrusion. Deep Visions
recovers its easy vibe and groove in the last two tracks, but
that single bump in the road keeps the disk from offering a smooth
ambient ride.
Floating
Mind, Circular Music
I
started out to write this review before I’d really given
this disk a fair shake. I find that often, Floating Mind (aka
Roberto Vitali) overuses repeated vocal samples in his work—one
small clip going over and over to the ragged edge of ad nauseum.
I’d noted this when I reviewed an earlier disk, Deep
Visions. Unfortunately, the opening track on Circular
Music suffers from this bit of excess, and it may have initially
tainted my listening experience. “Long Way” kicks
off with a snappy beat, tasty electronic twiddle and pulsing bass,
but then one of the samples comes in to gnaw at my forebrain and
drag the track toward displeasure. It goes away before the end,
but the piece as a whole would improve from its complete absence.
The same can be said for “S.P.A.S.S.” where the over-repetition
of one word rapidly wears out its unwelcome. When Vitali decides
to strip things down and deliver a more minimalist sensibility,
Circular Music becomes exponentially more palatable and
a much better piece of work. This is exemplified in a mid-disk
ride that begins with “Efemer,” a quietly dense track
where the manipulated vocal sample is more accent than imposition—this
is the sound of Vitali getting it right. The voice adds a sense
of disquiet and mystery over a subtle beat. “Psydela”
follows, bringing a tribal cadence that morphs into a secondary
pulse and synchs its rhythm with the flow of your subconscious
mind. “Nightmare City” delivers a grim touch of funk
with its constant bass thrum coursing over a gooey, liquid riff
and rough-hewn sound textures. “Searching Roots” slithers
in all sinewy and dark and dance-driven, with a half-heard looping
melody line that makes itself known like an afterthought. Brilliant
minimalism is at play again in the exquisitely dark and industrial
throb of “Mutantism.” All in all, Circular Music
starts out rough but inevitably redeems itself when the artist
decides to not force his own hand.
With this
new project, Pete Kelly, the man behind Igneous Flame, takes up
an interesting new instrument: the voice of singer Mary Whitaker.
Processing and manipulating Whitaker's voice gives Kelly a fresh
new pallete of sounds to match with "unpredicatble guitarist"
Nick Kemp's samples and Kelly's own continental-drift synth washes.
The opening track, "Easter Morning," is a smooth and
subtle introduction to the elements herein. Whitakers voice rises,
wavers, and morphs as Kemp adds nearly random slices of melody
over warm synth tones. It's only when Kelly pushes Whitaker's
vocal samples, making them more voice than instrument, that the
liquid flow of this CD is interrupted. (The second track, "Flaxen,"
suffers from this.) But when Whitaker becomes more tone than substance,
mixing easily with the slow development of Kelly's compositions,
8 Shades of Sound becomes a deeper, more enriching piece
of work that, like so much of Kelly's material, reveals layers
of complexity, warmth, and mastery with repeated attentive listens.
In large part I blame Giles Reaves for my addiction to spacemusic.
I bought his debut release, Wunjo, on cassette back in
the day and was utterly mesmerized by it. It remains one of my
favorite electronic works to date. Over the years I’ve eagerly
awaited more from Reaves and dutifully rebought the older stuff
in CD format. Which is why it bothers me that it took me a while
to figure out whether or not I liked The Range, his collaboration
with keyboardist/synthesist Dave Fulton. The good news is, I think
I figured it out, and I do like it. I must, because I keep going
back to it to see what it is that keeps me going back to it. The
issue, I think is that the CD's tendency to move from uptempo,
hard-hitting pieces to more contemplative, quiet works made it
something of an uneven ride. I paid more attention to the stuff
that slammed into me—in a pleasant way. For example, I was
more drawn to the urgency, energy and funk of pieces like “Fascination”
and “The Troubled Sky” than the brief, serene “Blinded
by Time” or the easy drift of "Feeling Hopelessly Drawn."
This CD is at its best when the amplitude gets kicked up and the
duo roar into a bit of a prog-rock-worshipping frenzy. Reaves’
drumming is frenetic and bold in these tracks and the power sends
surges through you. Which is not to say the softer stuff isn’t
without merit. When they popped up in a shuffle, they warranted
the attention I hadn’t afforded them in an album-only listen.
Taken as a trio, the last three cuts on The Range--the
title track, "The Space Between" and "The Walk"--are
an elegant suite of quieter pieces peppered with bits of energy.
The closing moments of "The Space Between" have something
of an early-Floyd mystique about them. Overal, there's very good
chemistry and interplay between Fulton and Reaves; musically the
dialogue is crisp and clear. The Range is definitely
worth a listen. And if at first you're not sure you like it, give
it a few more tries. It'll grow on you.
Galactic
Anthems, Lightyears from Home / Semper Fidelity
Until
recently, I had only heard Galactic Anthems’ Lightyears
from Home as individual tracks that popped up in shuffle
mode while it waited for me to get around to actually reviewing
it. And, truth be told, I had some reservations. Often I would
hear something that seemed a little bombastic or overly soundtrack-ish
and when I looked at the display, it was Galactic Anthems. But
then I’d be in the middle of some nice drift or spacemusic
cruiser and I’d look over and it was Galactic Anthems. Glenn
Adams, the man behind the Anthems, has put together a collection
of tracks from several CDs that for the most part create a pleasantly
spacey ride. There are bumps on the way—the first track,
“Transmigration,” gets a little caught up in a sort
of spacerock/prog-rock fury that gave me memory-whiffs of late-70s
Styx and the long version of Manfred Mann’s cover of “Blinded
by the Light.” “Orbital Bop” is one of those
tracks that’s looking just a little too hard for its soundtrack.
It’s like a secret agent movie theme in space. When Adams
takes a lighter hand on the controls and heads more toward the
ambient side, we get gorgeous drifts like “Adagio,”
the dew-glistening “Sunrise at Sheep Pass” (which
almost gives in to the bombast, but reels itself back in after
one dramatic burst), and “The Enchantment,” which
very gently closes the disk.
I wish I could be as complimentary about Adam’s CD Semper
Fidelity, his soundtrack to accompany a PDF’d Matt
Howarth comic that’s included on the disk. There are bright
spots here. “The Ferris Adagio” is a calm opener with
a smooth beat and interesting construction; “Drowned World”
is dark and atmospheric; and “The Fensi Largo” is
the relaxing, shimmering highlight of the disk. But too often
the fact that it’s meant to be a soundtrack comes through
in a very forced if not cliché-sounding manner. These are
the tracks that caught my ear, in a less-than-appreciative way,
in shuffle mode. Adams clearly knows what he’s doing—he
was recently named Unsigned Artist of the Month by Keyboard magazine
and his music’s been used in a number of shows on The Discovery
Channel, History Channel and MTV. But the lighter, spacier material
from his other releases, as compiled on Lightyears, are the better
bet for the ambient music listener.
Slick, sexy,
and solidly produced, Govinda's latest work is the most relaxing
CDs you'll ever dance to. It's one of those "best of many
worlds" types of albums, combining body-swaying beats, chillout
ambience, strong dub sensibilities, and piles of delicious ear
candy. A Middle-Eastern feel pervades the dozen tracks here and
each will easily find a home in clubs. Shane O Madden's sensual
violin work slides around each track like a lover covered in scented
oils, and vocal samples thrill like hints of ecstasy. The opener,
"Charming the Serpent" sets the tone and from there
"Worlds Within" refuses to let go. Along the way, standouts
include the very sexy "Love Glitch," which was also
featured on Intencity's "Spiritual Chillout" CD; the
trancey club-bop of "Inner Membrane"; the soft-as-the-Sultan's-cushions
"Calm"; and the closer, "Do I Dream," featuring
Chrysta Bell's gorgeous, emotionally tortured vocals which leave
the listener simply breathless.
Take
a black and white film camera. Find a landscape rimed with an
early snow--open plains, a lonely country road, a Japanese garden,
a desolate urban/industrial center. Pan across it in almost imperceptibly
slow motion, time slowed to a crawl. Let the images linger--the
cold depths of grey snow, an intermittent glint of misplaced sunlight
on icy crystals, the slovenly dance of wind-blown snow. When you've
got all that committed to film, overlay it with Jeff Greinke's
Winter Light. It will match perfectly. Greinke has created
a series of wintry tone-poems painted in the chilly hues of winter,
achingly beautiful works with a perfect touch of season-appropriate
melancholy. These are film scores in search of their scenes, narratives
built note by note with impeccable clarity. Winter Light
is a contemplative work of fully realized musical imagery. From
the tactile sadness of "Lament" and the Asian-hued quietude
of "Moving to Malaysia" and "Under the Pagdoa"
to the clouds-passing gentility of "Orographic," Winter
Light is a pleasure to experience again and again.
The word
that jumps to mind upon listening to Breath of Being
is "contemplative." That one word describes the tone
of the music, the composition of each song and the CD in totality,
and the mindset it imparts to the listener. Grega meshes a borderline
New-Age feel to a delicately ambient atmosphere to create a soothing,
sometimes surprising, and eminently listenable piece of work.
It's hard
to single out any one track, as all of the 11 cuts here stand
out in some way. "Simplicity" is perhaps one of the
best, a slow-the-breathing piece with gentle electronic treatments
over a lovely repeating motif. This is where that contemplative
mood begins to set in, and Grega holds it there with a series
of varied, intriguing pieces. In fact the very next track, "ZaZen,"
also builds on a repeating motif, but one that's more aggressively
electronic, bolstered by light percussion and surrounded by funky
sound choices. It's like a musical koan. "Dharma"
is another brain-massage bit of wavering electronic playfulness,
and an ethereal church-organ backdrop makes the blessedly lovely
"Sacred" live up to its name.
Breath
of Being never
falls into the ambient music trap of sounding like itself. Taken
seperately, each track has its own distinct character, and Grega's
pallet is clearly very broad. Together, they form a constantly
moving tapestry, seamlessly woven together under the artist's
hand.
Any good ambient
CD is like a journey through a unique world. Some are dark, some
are light, some are just plain odd. The world established in Fire
& Remembrance is almost unspeakably beautiful. It is a
quiet world of varying shades, mostly light with tinges of shadow.
It's a world you never grow tired of gazing at because although
you think you know it well, each time you come back you see something
new and breathtaking.
Hyperbole?
Perhaps a bit. But the fact is, Fire & Remembrance is
a superb piece of work built of diverse elements that slide together
nicely. Most of the tracks here rest on slow-shifting drones that
form a delicately solid base, but have more active elements playing
on top of them. "Ligurean Sea" is rich with Mediterranean
tones, veritably dripping with oilve oil courtesy of Gueble's
easy acoustic guitar style. "Paris 23H36" is as slow
and mysterious as fog on the Seine, its depths populated by the
ghosts of the City of Lights. "Raga 1" drifts in on
a drone and a hummed meoldy that's as sweet as your mother singing
you to sleep. And the equal gentleness of "Holy Light,"
which reintroduces us to Gueble's delicious guitar work, brings
the CD to a close with perfect stillness.
Gueble puts
his works together in a nicely organic meld. There's no jarring
switches of style; just a natural progression from piece to piece.
Even the initially dissonant tones of "Piano No. 20"
don't mar the overall feel. It's a perfect relaxation CD, but
one with enough additional stylistic and instrumentation touches
to raise it above most slow-synth-type relaxers.
All in all,
Fire & Remembrance is a Hypnagogue Highly Recommended CD.
For
his 2005 CD release Seven Seconds After, Dennis Haley
blew the dust off a 1995 tape recording, touched it up a bit and
sent it out on the new technology. All in all, Seven...
is a fair if slightly imbalanced effort that occasionally rears
up in a fit of prog-rock bombast that sounds for all the world
like a keyboard solo from any '70s live album. (I can’t
get Gregg Giuffria’s solo from the Angel album “Live
Without A Net” out of my head, especially when the second
track, “Reflections on a Tranquil Dimension” comes
on...) Of the four tracks presented here, the first and last are
well done. The opener, “Introspective,” neatly captures
the feel of the title, matching a bit of slow-hand drift with
a simple melody ticking like an unseen clock. The title track,
25 minutes worth of it, is the best bit here, a workable blend
of spacemusic and prog that never strays too far into experimentation.
David
Helpling & Jon Jenkins, Treasure
Let me say this first: If tracks from this disc don’t show
up in a nature documentary on PBS or the Discovery Channel in
the next year, I’ll eat my CD collection. On Treasure,
Helpling and Jenkins offer up melodic aural landscapes painted
in dramatic southwestern hues. Tribal drums rumble over sweeping
instrumentals and the mind’s eye immediately sees one of
those great helicopter shots over some distant veldt or tundra
as animals sprint for cover. Each track is nicely cinematic, a
soundtrack in search of a scene (as I’ve said too many times
before), and a pleasure to immerse yourself in. Treasure
is a solid ride all the way across—there are no lackluster
tracks here to impede the flow. Rather, it’s 10 cuts of
solid classic New Age beauty, masterfully crafted, that can dwell
nicely in the background and then all at once pull a strand of
pure emotion from you. There are many moments to get caught up
in here. This is my first experience with Helpling and Jenkins,
and I’m going back for more—because I can’t
wait for PBS to catch on.
ven without
the blessing of and overseeing by Robert Rich, this debut CD from
Chad Hoefler would still be an impressive, important album. With
this first outing, Hoefler has carved his name onto the roster
of artists to watch. This is a vivid, dense, magnificently sculpted
piece of ambient work that moves readily and well between classic-style
ambient and tribal-tinged musics. It is inescapable listening.
Opening with the throaty bass drone and aboriginal-feel percussion
of "Crimson Lost," Twlight then moves the listener
through a series of fully realized soundworlds. And each affords
plenty of time to experience it; six of the seven pieces are over
eight and a half minutes long, and Hoefler uses the time to its
fullest. His landscapes tend toward darkness, with layers moving
across layers in constant, breath-like motion. "Enveloping
Shadow" is deep, grim, and beautiful. "Substrata"
is a percussion-driven piece that burrows its way upward through
dense, ever-lightening layers of shifting, fluid chords. "Refugia"
awaits at the surface. Lighter and airier, it's a fresh breath
before diving back down into the depths of "In a Marooned
Moment," which moves brilliantly from dark to light borne
on a raft of light tribal drumming. It is is one of the highlights
of this magnificent CD. The final two tracks, "On the Eve
of the Plum Frost" and "Orchard of Stone," restate
the exquisite dichotomy at work here: the former is a deep, slowly
drifting journey through somber tones and wayward sounds, while
the latter again rides a more upbeat current, ending Twilight
with a sense of a welcome, approaching dawn.
It's Hoefler's
ability to deftly straddle the borders within the genre that makes
Twilight such an astounding work. It is not a tribal
piece; it's not dark ambient; it's not classic ambient. It is
a perfect blend of all three, an expertly narrated tour through
the composer's visions, soothing at one turn, envigorating at
the next, and revealing new complexities and nuances at each listen.
Chad Hoefler's debut CD, Twilight in the Offing, is very
much a Hypnagogue Highly Recommended CD.
David
Michael Huber, Tranquility Base
I
have a friend who likes to say, "The problem I have with
ambient music is that I keep waiting for it to start." I
have that problem, to some degree, with Tranquility Base.
While most of the pieces eventually work their way up into a well-blended
ambient groove, Huber's almost-too-deliberate addition of individual
elements--a melody fragment here, a sound there--threatens to
undermine the listening experience. In fact, the repeated blips
that open the album almost had me tearing it out of the CD player
in the first minute. Once Huber's pieces get up to speed, they're
quite enjoyable. But it's those first few minutes that can be
trying.
The best piece
here is "Serenitatis," a 20-minute tribally driven chill-out
jaunt, replete with drums and nightsounds to help walk you downward
into a relaxing darkness. This piece folds neatly into "Lunacy,"
which keeps the easy groove flowing.
Because I
am a writer and editor by trade, I have to be just a bit nitpicky
about packaging here. I feel that if you're going to present yourself
to the public as a professional anything, that presentation
must be as flawless as possible. And while most people wouldn't
so much as notice typographical errors on a CD sleeve, the fact
is that if they're there, they're there, and they shouldn't be.
Ambient artists, you have been warned!
Igneous
Flame, Oxana
Igenous Flame
(secret identity: Pete Kelly) is in no hurry. That's evident from
the first rich, drawn-out drones of his superb classic-ambient-style
work, Oxana. Over the course of its 14 elegant tracks,
Oxana moves the listener through glacially developing
soundscapes that fold one into the next with organic, crystalline
precision. This is an album that certainly won't give up all its
secrets on a cursory listen, and will at times lull you into those
spots where you're not aware you're listening but are still being
affected at a deeper level by Kelly's thickly layered sonics.
While much
of Oxana is suffused with a distinct tonal warmth, something
in the change that moves the album from the ending of "Isolder"
and into "Chant" marks the latter track as one of the
best--and warmest--on the CD. Its stark, rising beauty catches
my ear every time and stirs something inside me--but it's certainly
not the only spot where Kelly's music elicits a reaction. Oxana
closes with "Lost at Sea," where the use of a staticky
BBC shipping report slips under an ominous drone like the strangely
beautiful voice of a ghost. Oxana is a perfect CD for
meditation or simply realizing that now and then it's good to
slow down.
Igneous Flame
(secret identity: Pete Kelly) has a potent knack for creating
warm, liquid ambient music. His work moves with tectonic deliberation,
layers patiently building on layers. On his fourth CD, "Satu,"
he turns to the guitar as the conduit for his slow-motion musings.
The result is a deeply relaxing, gorgeous disk of seamless pieces
that are arguably the best he's ever produced.
The disk opens
with the industrial-tinged burblings of "Sky-scraper."
It makes for a good introduction to the elemental makeup of the
music here--the layers of tiny, carefully selected sounds, the
easy drones, and the understated guitar work in those moments
when a guitar sounds like a guitar. By the track's end, all solid
things have discorporeated and we're on our way into the Igneous
Flame etherea.
Kelly's drone
work on Satu is some of his best yet—rippling sonic silk
in varying shades of light and dark, alternately large, bold sweeps
and small, subtly shifting things. Unprocessed guitar is sprinkled
through the piece as perfect accents, anchors to solidity. The
entire album is a cohesive whole. There are no standout tracks;
only excellently constructed pieces that fit together in an entirely
organic, complementary way that leaves no room for awkward intrusion.
I must correct
Pete on one front: On the track listing on the inside cover, he
notes for Sky-scraper that "Headphone listening is recommended,
incorporates binaural recordings.") What it should recommend
is that the headphones go on and stay on. As with all Igneous
Flame recordings, deep listening is its own rich reward.
Check it out
at Chillfactor10 Records or Pete Kelly Sound.
Igneous
Flame, Astra
Igneous Flame
and his guitar are back, offering up a suite of lush, warm ambient
drifts on the new release, Astra. Pete Kelly, the man
behind the Flame, lets the actual guitar sounds come more to the
front on Astra than he did on his last guitar-based release,
Satu, and the CD truly benefits from his subtle and graceful
playing style. This, layered on top of ethereal drones that drift
like wind-pushed clouds, makes for a deep, relaxing work that
is, from my experience, simply Kelly’s best. This is a virtually
seamless blend of slow-moving, well-constructed pieces. Kelly
never feels the need to delve
