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Feb. 2nd, 2007 @ 11:52 am As a Means Through Which I Can Speak by Ben Fleury-Steiner

Tags: reviews by gurdonark

"The three essentials of the English language are: Purity, Perspicuity and Precision."—Joseph Devlin

Ben Fleury-Steiner runs the non-profit record label Gears of Sand. Gears of Sand uses a straightforward and admirable plan. The label releases ambient and Zoviet-France-esque experimental artists in limited edition CD-Rs, featuring solid artwork. Its roster of artists is impressive, and each GoS recoding I have heard has been a worthwhile experience.

Dr. Fleury-Steiner's own work, As a Means Through Which I Can Speak, presents eight pieces which explore the furrowed yet rich field of melodic drone. Recorded between August 2005 and September 2006, the work contains atmospheric pieces which seek to approximate a "journey of discovery." As a Means Through Which I Can Speak opens with "Distance is an Accomplishment of the World (Part One)," a strong piece which uses a mildly ethereal melody and spaces between sounds to achieve a pleasing effect. "As a Means through which I Can Speak (Part One)," the next piece, achieves a resonance I found very satisfying. These two pieces are perhaps the strongest on the CD.

Fleury-Steiner's work is neither synth-happy nor so minimal as to be a mere soundscape for pondering. He instead achieves a balanced sound which, in the main, satisfies both the electronic pioneer and the person who, as I do, enjoys hearing melodic themes elegantly expressed in drone. The decision to break two of the tracks into parts is a wise one. I could easily imagine this release being broken down further from eight pieces into twelve or sixteen. I think this is because what I value in this work is its sense of a crisp moment—a sense that is subserved by shorter pieces. The pieces on this release are not equally effective. The pieces that have a melodic theme embedded effectively in the drones please my ears far more than the pieces which merely achieve a particular drone-riff and settle in for the duration. The release has a solid sense of production values, and the mastering by William Fields is effective.

I've admired Gears of Sand since I acquired one of its initial releases. Its releases consistently illustrate how small labels can do things that large labels are no longer capable of doing. As a Means Through Which I Can Speak provides a rich array of interesting pieces—uneven perhaps, but never unentertaining. Even the least pieces are a solid listen, and the best pieces are sublime. Ambient music, like the English language in the old Joseph Devlin saw, may be about "purity," "perspicuity" and "precision," yet Fleury-Steiner reminds us that ambient music is also about lingering questions, half-dreamt notions, and everyday-ecstatic encounters. As a Means Through Which I Can Speak eschews dronastic bombast and elven song titles in search of a kind of off-kilter yet lovely sonic poetry. It is a meditation without chant, and a question-less evocation of mystery. I'm glad I listened to this mode of speaking.

Available from Gears of Sand.

Review by

gurdonark.

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Sep. 14th, 2006 @ 09:08 am Apophasis by Caul

Tags: ambient reviews by gurdonark

"The spirit of the unattained,
I am to those who seek to name me,
A good desired but never gained:
All shall pursue, but none shall claim me."
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Titles of songs and genre labels for artists who create ambient music intrigue me. Bret Smith, who records as Caul, has created an intriguing album, Apophasis, which I will use to illustrate my point. The notes for the album at the Darkwinter site proclaim that: "Apophasis is 'negative theology'—a view of God determined by defining what God is not." This title evokes my interest, and adds a narrative quality to the story. The note also proclaims that the album was "[r]ecorded June-July 2006 at Epiphany Studios, Baldwin City KS." My initial knee-jerk reaction causes me to wonder if the album would sound differently to me if the title of the album had been "Baldwin City, Kansas."

A similar question arises when one considers the artist Caul, who has established himself as a dark ambient artist. Apophasis fits within the genre of dark ambient, but to dismiss it as "another dark ambient drone" would be inappropriate. The album provides a rich but not cluttered landscape of sound, from its minimalist opening section through lyrical but not overpowering melodic sections into a crescendo of quiet noise.

An artist chooses an album or song title for a reason, even if the reason is that the title merely serves as a placeholder. This title seems more than a placeholder. In this sonic context, apophasis, as defined for the listener, gives a springboard from which to contemplate the work. The single piece which comprises this album serves as a kind of metaphor for the spaces between—the places beyond conventional expectation—in the title's illustration, the places where God is not (and which are not God). It features some of the otherworldly sounds and evocative passages one might expect from a quasi-religious reference. The album fails to fall into stereotype, though, providing instead a solid experience which rewards the listener. Ambient devotees enjoy the spaces where the fabric of sound creates music within the silence. Caul's work on this album provides ample joy in this regard.

The album features a sense of quiet determination—a kind of exploration of sound. Had the album indeed been named "Garden City, Kansas," it would have had the same impact, but perhaps evoked for some listeners different imagery. It is tempting to divert into a discussion of the correlation between Kansas prairie and the things that are not God, but such sarcasm is beside the point.

The point is instead that Darkwinter and Caul deliver here a netlabel free download release of subtle, complex ambient music. Its approach is dark ambient with a minimal bent but whose scope and power are real and evocative. Caul does not answer for us the question of what God is not—or is. Caul challenges us as listeners to become involved in an indirect narrative, told in ambient sound. I enjoyed his storytelling very much, even as the story was without literal plot (other than a single, quickly explained word).

I recommend this album, from its subtle opening sounds to its near-choral interludes, from its satisfying deep drones to its unexpected shocks of unpredictable but never annoying electro-noise. I believe that the search for God lies in the spaces between the obvious truisms. Caul takes us to the musical equivalent of those spaces, to my delight. Nathan Larson's Darkwinter label has distinguished itself by releasing some wonderful dark ambient material. This album is no exception.

Available as a free download from Darkwinter

Review by

gurdonark.

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Apr. 21st, 2006 @ 09:49 am Tissue Paper Ghosts by Mikronesia

Tags: ambient reviews by gurdonark

One thing I enjoy about ambient, noise, and chill music is the way that they have so many little offshoots. They resemble streams in a single river that do not directly converge, but sometimes meet at a huge delta, where this trickles into that. Each stream of ambient listeners travels in a separate but somehow interlocking set of streams and eddies. Each river sells a couple of dozen copies each, to devotees of each sub-genre.

Like small home-based churches of strictest protestant faith, though, listeners of those genres related to ambient sometimes operate with one true vision of the way that music must be created and experienced. To one group, the use of beats in material robs it of its ambient salvation. To another, any sound other than minimal drones becomes suspect. Each group has its own heresies, its own purities, and its own apostles' creed. Sometimes this can be comforting, as with artists who stake out a worthy small niche of sound, pure unto itself, as a charming construct. Sometimes this can be amusing, as with internet articles by ill-informed dance music fans who make statements along the lines that the genre "ambient music" was invented on a techno dance-floor in a pick-up bar in Stoke, UK, in 1995, when Ian and Kevin discovered this old device called the mellotron. Once in a while, it can be just like watching a deep denominational schism in a church with only twenty members—intriguing, but not, ultimately, satisfying. As time goes on, I try to dissolve all my mental rules about what "is" and "is not" ambient music. I wish to live in a wash of sound, not in mere doctrines, deeply cherished, about what sound "should be."

Mikronesia's Tissue Paper Ghosts provides an album not narrowly confined by genre. The first piece, "Slow Bleeding," mixes ambient elements with a panoply of sounds and samples that would ordinarily be found in a piece from the noise genre. Others of the eight pieces range across a spectrum from fairly "traditional" drone ambience into chill with pleasant beats. This is not a "purist" album of hidebound doctrinaire ambience, but instead an eight-ply panoply of ambience, noise, glitch, and chill. To me, the most effective piece is "Del Rio," which I would label in the "chill" category, filled with simple melodic vigor.

Those who attend one of the small, home-based "churches of ambience" may not be attracted to Tissue Paper Ghosts, because it is not a narrow-cast genre piece. Those who, like me, strive to no longer see ambience (and its fellow traveler genres) in such narrow terms will find much to enjoy in Tissue Paper Ghosts. The content is imperfect, though the music is consistently solid. I found some of the dense samples buried in the mixes quite intriguing, but some sounded a bit "been there, done that" to me. Yet the presentation herein is never boring.

They say that hybrids have added vigor. I can certianly attest that hybrid guppies are the hardiest ones. Mikronesia's Tissue Paper Ghosts is certainly a vigorous hybrid, and worthy of attention from those who have left the church of faithless creed, and entered the faith of inner musical salvation.

Available from Gears of Sand records.

Review by

gurdonark.

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Mar. 29th, 2006 @ 04:16 pm Reduced by Mystified

Tags: ambient reviews by gurdonark

When they encounter works of art which show that using new media can lead to new experiences and to new consciousness, and expand our senses, our perception, our intelligence, our sensibility, then they will become interested in this music.—Karlheinz Stockhausen

Field recording dates from almost the invention of phonography. The potential of the new recording technology to permit an experience of and documentation for the reality of sound as it is experienced captured the imagination as soon as the imaginative leap of technology manifested itself. In its earliest uses, its utility as an ethnographic device, to preserve passing cultures and languages, became an accepted science. The use of this technology to "capture" birdsong and wildlife noise became a subtle art and demanding science as soon as the idea turned from conception to reality. A visit to the Yahoo Nature Recordists discussion group impresses one with the seriousness and high purpose of the literal recordist's task.

In the field of ambient music, however, field recording has served an artistic purpose which long predates the pronouncements of Mr. Eno. The construction of sound collage and the use of morphed sound as a substitute for traditional composition predates musique concrete, but perhaps had its first spring flowering in the musique concrete movement. As contrasted to "abstract music" this musique concrete would use sound samples in service of the musical piece, rather than using the musical piece to define the samples. This was not a new idea, of course, but it marked a departure from an accepted set of western ideas of what music generation "should be to be music." Movements rose and fell like palpitating beats of peripatetic hearts, but, over time, the idea of using sound as an experience of listening all its own became firmly entrenched in that set of varying genres generically termed "ambient music."

Field recording, a precursor of ambient music, thus also became its progeny. The formal and somewhat academic music which resulted from the movements of the 1950s and 1960s shared a mutual osmosis with the electronic music arising in the wake of the great steamship known as the affordable synthesizer. Field recording became its own grandpa, as ambient musicians discovered that the world is a sonic sample, if one merely has the invention and recordingware to serve as sampler.

Thomas Park, who records as Mystified, has proven himself a prolific but never omnipresent creator of solid ambient and experimental music. Field recording is part of his repertoire. This is not birdsong or preserved aboriginal music, nor is it the dry formalism of abstract sound collage artists. Instead, in his new album Reduced, Mystified explores the experience of found sound, both as a musical interlink and also as an experience unto itself.

Field-recording-derived works challenge the listener. They urge a departure from the artist/audience, concert hall/applause, and composition/appreciation mode of western music listening. This is not to say that this is an artless "anything goes" medium. Ambient music based on field recording instead is an open invitation to an appreciation of sound itself. If ambient music features any one religious tenet, it is that sound is an interesting listening experience because it is sound, an experience sans story. One can paraphrase the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who suggested that, in a new era, we must live as if God does not exist—because God compels us to live in this way. Similarly, in field recordings the reader experiences music outside the context of traditonal dervied composition--and yet a trinity of composition informs the reader—a sense of what constitutes music, a sense of the aural context or meaning of the field sounds, and an experience of the creative choices by the artist in sample selection for presentation. The listener lives as if the music were not there—for the sake of musicality itself.

In Reduced, for example, the piece "Cuban Deli" features the voices and noises of a literal Cuban Deli. It's precisely the type of work that might get an ambient artist the ultimate reward of the lay sobriquet "that's not music, that's noise." Yet the sounds all have a curious musicality about them, imposed from the listener's preconception, and noises which themselves are not narrative acquire a narrative quality as the voices say words and the machinery gives rise to imaginative visuals. The pieces in Reduced, sixteen in number, vary from literal basic field recording of events of daily living to processed experiences of traditional ambience expressed through the mechanism of field samples. If "Filling the Tub" explores the hidden musicality of ordinary water flowing, pieces like "AM Stumble," "Dragging Time," and "Continuum" serve as "concrete" compositions in which the sound samples are welded into a themes recognizable to traditional (i.e., latter-day) ambient listeners.

A truism of this type of review is to write that "patience is rewarded in this type of music." I am not sure, though, that it is patience so much as the active listening ear that makes this form of music interesting. Unlike the 1970s constructs, this form of "background music" is presented with the very idea of its escaping the background and entering into an active encounter with the listener. Mystified's work impresses me because it is not laden with "important" (and ultimately cute and somewhat banal) artistic flourishes. These found sounds sometimes serve as unprocessed or lightly processed direct listening experiences, while others sound to my ears very artfully chosen to press into service as something ambient listeners would agree is "music" not "stray environmental noise." One gauge of the success of this type of music is the diversion factor—can the pieces hold the interest of the attentive listener. In the main, the pieces pass this test. The best either feature nearly "pure" field recording of noises or machinery or rather processed use of field sound to create more traditional "ambient music." Those at neither extreme, and in particular those based on human voice recording, do not work so well for this listener.

Reduced can be readily recommended, however, as it suffers from neither affectation nor pretension. The pieces, simply titled, literally "are what they are." They reward the engaged listener, and baffle the listener hunting for easy drones and titles based on fantasy novels. As with any field recording, the casual listener may, indeed, be mystified. But Thomas Park, who records as Mystified, engages the listener with experiences which, while not new, are freshly presented. Reduced plumbs the waterways of pure sound—and the intrepid sailor may wish to join Mr. Park in filling this particular bathtub of sound.

Available from Mystified's site.

Review by

gurdonark.

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Mar. 22nd, 2006 @ 09:33 am Past Andromeda by Peter Koniuto

Tags: ambient reviews by gurdonark

The rise of the netlabels revolutionized ambient music. Some labels operate in much the same way that traditional labels did, except with a business plan based on internet-only marketing. Others utilize digital downloads in pursuit of sales. The term "netlabel" itself, however, has acquired a secondary meaning, in that a netlabel tends to release its material for free download. A good number of fine ambient labels arose which net-release wonderful material available for free download, including, to name but a couple, Webbed Hand and Darkwinter.com. The use of Creative Commons licenses, which can be structured to give a broad permission to copy the work on a non-commercial basis, places netlabels in the position of seeking to make their impact through recognition rather than through financial renumeration.

The rise of this phenomenon is in part an inevitable outgrowth of the rapid improvement in home recording technology. The distance between what a consumer can do at home and a professional CD still exists, but the chasm is less gaping than in former days. In the field of ambient music, among others, the distance between fan and artist, never entirely remote, has narrowed, as listeners become participants. The ambient music listener base now includes listener participants, a participant audience who better understand the rigors and risks in each pole vault and high jump. The old religion of rock gods and worshipping fans melts in the face of a new egalitarian faith.

Some bewail this evolution of electronic music from a specialist's field to a mass consumption participation field. People worry that a plethora of material drowns out the quality. One sympathizes with the sentiment every time one hears a Casio-esque Moog emulation playing "ambient music" that would not be out of place in a very cheap hand-held video game a decade ago. My own view, though, differs from the "drowning out the quality" view. I believe we are entering a new time in which traditional distribution mechanisms for music, particularly for "niche" genres, are going to disappear. The old construct in which a large (or small) record company signs the artist to a form of financing contract, with a small royalty incentive upon repayment of a disastrously structured loan, will fade. The price-per-unit of compact discs will eventually reduce, particularly as digital downloads make prices of two and three dollars each disc not only possible but economically advantageous for label and artist. I further believe that the more revolutionary concept of donationware music, in which the fan pays the label and artist on a voluntary basis, offers a viable distribution mechanism once people adopt the idea that music distribution can be handled in a new way, consistent with the new technology and Creative Commons ideas arising. I believe in this idea sufficiently strongly to have released my own work (certatinly the work of a listener who creates rather than an "ambient artiste") on www.disfish.com, which uses an entirely donationware model for distribution.

The foundation of my faith is established by releases such as Peter Koniuto's Past Andromeda on Stasisfield.com. Past Andromeda is a fifty-nine minute piece which traffics in the intersection where atmospheric space ambient meets systems electro-acoustic music. Mr. Koniuto creates a central melodic drone theme, underlays it with deep and satisfying drones, and then intersperses the piece with samples ranging from piano sections to radio transmission waves. As with the best ambience of this type, the piece repeats its themes with slight variations, creating an effect that is sedate and yet never boring. The term "meditative" is arguably overused in ambient music reviews, but I find that this is ideal background music to soundtrack one's thoughts on an otherwise hectic drive. This is indeed an "ambient" music, because it does not intrude upon one's consciousness in the way that a Motown classic can do, but instead hovers on the edge of one's active attention.

Mr. Koniuto's device is to use the background spaces surrounding his melodic themes to introduce his many small thematic "found samples." In other works, this device proves annoying, as the samples some artists use tend to cloy through their obviousness or tend to have a joke-burdened quality not in keeping with the work. Mr. Koniuto commits neither sin, introducing instead effects and subtle themes that fit well with his main melodic drones. Past Andromeda has its antecedents in 1970s ambient music, from that heady time when the notion of sound as sound had been rediscovered with a tent revival enthusiasm. Yet the work never feels trite or tamed. Instead, this is a subtle, integrated listen—nothing less than the kind of mature, capable work that reminds us why we listen to ambient music.

So long as artists like Peter Koniuto make subtle ambient music for netlabels, this movement will thrive. My own hope, and belief, is that the day will soon arise when we spend our dollars in donations and small-per-unit-sale quantities. The end of the Recording Industry Association of America labels should not be attempted through civil disobedience, but through mass diversion of resources to places like netlabels and net artists. When the day comes that the ambient community has devoted it resources in this more targeted way, then ambient artists rather than corporate artist marketing departments will receive the economic benefit of the work that ambient artists do.

While we wait and work for this halcyon day, however, I commend to you Peter Koniuto's Past Andromeda as a subtle soundtrack for the conceptualization of this velvet revolution.

Available at Stasisfield.

Review by

gurdonark.

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Oct. 27th, 2005 @ 08:33 am Mellow Stasis by Solyaris

Tags: ambient reviews by gurdonark

In ambient music criticism, one is often tempted to box the work under review into a sub-genre, so that it can be matted, pinned, and placed in some elegant butterfly box of the critic's devising; a curious form of styrofoam-bordered box in which the critically defined boundaries overwhelm the colorful and delicate wings of the ambient works themselves. Yet ambient pieces are not wikipedia entries, but breathing expressions of artistic vision. When one places the butterfly in the cyanide jar, the wings may be preserved, but the life is drained inexorably.

In "Mellow Stasis", Giorgio Robino, who records as Solyaris, tackles issues of melody and intonation with a style that is more "light" than "dark," more "space" than "tribal," and based on treated guitars rather than merely synthesizers alone. Yet all those defining descriptors fail to convey what it is to listen to Solyaris' work.

Solyaris creates shimmering melodic soundscapes, but they are soundscapes not confined by diatonic scales. He experiments with alternative intonations, with varations from traditional scales, and with a variety of electronica effects devices to achieve an album which is consistently technically interesting.

An album, though, is more than its production values. Rather than give some play by play explanation of perceived audio innovations and imitations, I'd rather describe the experience one gets from listening to "Mellow Stasis." Solyaris creates a work which is consistently quite listenable. The listener has the feel of "sounds rising"—in pitch, in the texture of sounds, and in the progress of each piece. The melodies are all accessible, but not all easy to pin down. In "Despair Dissolution," the sounds are liberating, despite the sombreness implied by the title, and yet one can hear the tonal variations which hint at darker things. In my favorite piece, "Frogs Fall from the Sky in the Magnolias' Dales," one gets a sense of transport, as if the piece seeks to take the listener from headphones to heaven.

The array of guitars used in this album builds a wall of sound which makes for a rich, full-textured feel to the album. Although some pieces are long, the work is never boring. There is some repetition of musical ideas among the pieces, but the effect is, overall, one of a series of inter-related pieces rather than of needless repetition. I found less than ideal the way that sounds tend to rise in pitch in some "stairway upward" effect, which I thought might have been leavened with more "movements down," to create a richer palette of sonic choices. Still, I found this album to be of consistently high quality, with solid production values, made by an artist with a sure compositional style.

Solyaris is a good choice for one who wishes ambient work more on the "light/space" side of the spectrum, although he should not be dismissed as merely another "space ambient" guy. This is music with a lightness of touch but a seriousness of purpose. His music will not appeal to all—those who prefer only dark dissonance might be disappointed in the somewhat more formalistic and fundamentally "light," modest tonal experiments underpinning this work. For me, though, the test is a simpler one—I enjoy putting Solyaris into the CD player, because the melodies he writes are interesting and not trite. On a Wednesday night before a business trip, that seems to me to be an accomplishment indeed.

Available from the Solyaris website.

Review by

gurdonark.

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Sep. 19th, 2005 @ 08:02 am Signals from the Great Beyond by Oöphoi

Tags: ambient reviews by gurdonark

You know that I never take up my pen to support a system, or to draw, whether wrongly or rightly, certain conclusions. I give myself up to the natural flow of my ideas, allowing myself in good faith to be led from one consequence to another. Therefore, till my work is finished, I never know exactly what result I shall reach, or if I shall arrive at any.—Alexis de Tocqueville

Ambient music sometimes attracts from the non-ambient listener a reference to either of two quite different yet similarly confining stereotypes. One stereotype heard expressed is the saw that ambient music serves as a thing divorced from human emotions—a cold music of the machines. The fact that ambient music often uses electronica in non-traditional melodic structures equates in the popular imagination with a lack of warmth or human interconnection in the form. The second confining stereotype is that ambient musicians are inevitably lost in a kind of new age trance consciousness, inaccessible to any but fellow devotees, and somewhat limited in any event. In this latter charge, ambient artists sometimes serve as unconscious co-conspirators. Ambient pieces from some artists receive song titles derived from science fiction themes and from spiritual traditions whose terminology puts some in mind of either progressive rock in specific, or of the Aquarian Bible and the Book of Urantia in general. Ambient artists therefore face contradictory but strongly held preconceptions in the popular imagination that they simultaneously teach a course in robotics and A Course in Miracles.

The sense of the “otherness” of the ambient form is another aspect of this perceptual equation. Both ambient artists and the general public speak of the ways in which ambient ideas can differ markedly from mainstream rock and pop. The cry “that's not music, that's noise!” arises from the casual stranger as to even the most structured and melodic dark ambient sounds. Similarly, some ambient listeners and fans speak of ambient music as if its concepts are wholly new, taken from the air by Brian Eno, made fortuitously possible only by enhanced technology.

Yet so many ambient concepts and ideas have their antecedents in folk and popular music. The concepts of sound as sound, meditative resonance and the musical virtue of silence date back centuries upon centuries. In the music of the west and of the Near East, the drone qualities of chant provide a direct influence upon modern ambient. Classical music of the Indian subcontinent features numerous concepts and performance dynamics which anticipate and influence ambient music. The use of African, Asian and Australian aboriginal sounds in ambient music has become at least one sub-genre unto itself.

Even in American popular music, ambient and drone concepts were firmly lodged hundreds of years before their antecedents visited the thinking of musique concrete and Ipswich School of Art circles. The mountain dulcimer, an American version of a well-known European instrument, features diatonic “drone strings” which add an atmosphere of sound to a piece played in the traditional Appalachian fashion Even that most American and carefree of inventions, the kazoo, adapts the tribal mirliton drone horn, and releases it upon the carnival stage. From the Shakers to Sacred Harp, the antecedents of ambient can easily be discerned. In this sense, ambient is a modern folk music.

When one approaches a complex and important ambient artist like Oöphoi, therefore, one must be wary of ascribing to his ideas the imprimatur of the new or revolutionary. In this particular case, such a label of “new” or “avant garde” might disserve Oöphoi's key strength—he is a synthesis of ideas, and a weaver of sonic stories.

It might be argued that story is inescapable in any musical work, as people are inherently story-telling animals. Even the title, “untitled,” or the least descriptive, numerically titled remote atonal piece conveys a story, if only the story of the lack of a title. In Oöphoi, the use of sonic devices to tell a story is his key strength.

On the face of things, Signals from the Great Beyond commits an oft-told ambient sin. Its liner notes announce that it is inspired by the concept of “crop circles.” For this reviewer, the mention of “crop circles” carries the baggage of particularly sentimental new age ebullient magazine articles, coupled with recollections of grinning local United Kingdom farmers, explaining how they pulled off the hoax. On the face of it, a “crop circles” album plays into the stereotype that ambient artists remain adrift on some New Age topographic ocean. Oöphoi, after all, has another piece entitled “Lord of the Starfields.”

In this instance, though, the title should not play into the stereotype. For one thing, if Oöphoi has a song entitled “Lord of the Starfields,” then it must be pointed out that the Canadian folk singer Bruce Cockburn has also used that title, a common appropriation from an earlier literary work for both artists. More importantly, Signals from the Great Beyond is not a meditation piece about how to contact alien beings in one's hops field. Oöphoi's work instead evocatively creates imagery for untold, but hinted at, exciting tales. It is a soundtrack for a movie never to be made, although it is not written as soundtrack music. It writes a wordless poem, using both melody and a kind of pleasant noise.

The work is comprised of four tracks. The first track, “Kolenhaar,” combines an array of subtle sounds and pitches, invading the senses insidiously but pleasantly with waves of effective sound. As with many ambient artists, the old boundaries between “dark” and “light” ambient are of no real use in evaluating this work. Oöphoi borrows from traditional western melodic structures, but does not hesitate to deviate into unique sounds and aural experiences. Oöphoi is in this respect an artist of sound rather than of “music,” and, in my thinking, more of an ambient artist than a songwriter. The thing that makes his work so enchanting is that he seems to marry sound and story. He does not have a literal plot to spring upon the reader—and the song titles are, if anything, misleading. Rather, each piece has a sense of introduced sound, with the intention of creating a gauzy, half-remembered sense of familiarity. The concept of ambient music as “dream-like” is frankly far too narrow and confining. Oöphoi does not speak to the listener's dreams, but instead engages the listener's active attention in a search for alternative lines of inquiry. But the inquiry leads to hidden pathways, and quiet, affirming alleyways.

The second piece, “Lightwaves,” and the third piece “Geometry,” differ from the first piece in that they have an almost elegiac sense of ritual and ceremony. Sounds and instrumental “voices” appear in the work in vignette form, as well as in shimmering waves. Silence is used to emphasize that the listener is being shown the potential of music as a spiritual vehicle. But no mantras are shared, no divinities sermonized—we are left only with the sensation of sound, washing, defining, explaining, and yet remaining ineffable. I thought of funeral dirges, of eastern meditation bells, and of European urban-jazz landscapes, yet the work is not derivative of any of those things. Oöphoi's gift is evocation, a non-linear storytelling not bound by the “plot” of his song titles.

The fourth piece, “Sculpting the Fields,” adopts a sonic device which gives me pause. Silence is an important component of many ambient works, and effective use of silence benefits the first three pieces of Signals from the Great Beyond. Yet, in “Sculpting the Fields,” a good bit of the piece of punctuated by extended silence and extended introduction and exit of barely heard sound. While I applaud the experimental reach of the work, the brass ring remains elusive. To my ears, “Sculpting the Fields” loses its way in its extended silence conceit. This is the only real flaw in the album from my point of view.

I long for the day when ambient artists don't name their songs “Sculpting the Fields.” I believe that Oöphoi, an Italian musician named Gianluigi Gasparetti, might have found similar prompts from the “great beyond” of the dust before a coming rain, or the feel of a warm hand in his on a frozen morning. But I recognize that each artist must choose his or her own muse and amusements. Yet, I caution that if the story is too oft-told in the song titles, it can obscure the story in the music itself.

I recommend Signals from the Great Beyond as a wonderful piece of ambient music. It asks all the right questions—and it wisely fails to answer most of them. The questions are posited without words. The music speaks volumes. I congratulate both Oöphoi and Gears of Sand on this fine work.

Available from Gears of Sand.

Review by

gurdonark.

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Aug. 9th, 2005 @ 09:33 am Review Index

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: v/a—From Here to Tranquility 5: The Silent Channel

Okay, the Review Index is finally "live." I didn't realize I wrote so many reviews.

If you find, through your browsing, that any of the links in the index go to the wrong reviews, drop me a line. Thanks!

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Aug. 6th, 2005 @ 09:32 am Twilight in the Offing by Chad Hoefler

Tags: ambient reviews by gurdonark

"We may laugh down the dream, For the dream breaks and flies; And we trust now the gleam, For the gleam never dies;— So it's off now the load, For we know the night's call, And we know now the road And the road leads us all."–from the Edwin Arlington Robinson poem "Twilight Song."

Is twilight in the offing? This question plagues ambient listeners nowadays. The second and third generation of any new movement face the problems of complacency. The rich and vital movements of barely yesterday–minimalism, tribal fusion, dark ambient, for example–become the stock genres of today. Thus, the early Quakers moved from religious ecstasy and radical notions to fervent shop-keeping and regular meetings. Thus, punk calcified into three chord lounge jazz, albeit jazz with mohawks. A visit to the ambient message boards yields glimpses of fervent debate about whether a work falls into "this box" or "that box." Heaven deliver we who seek out the new from actually experiencing any. After the calcium builds sufficiently, the risk of blockage ensues.

From the heady days when "sound as sound" seemed more a mantra than a brand slogan, ambient movement personnel–musicians, fans, promoters and academics–sought to create a "new" movement, which redefined how music is experienced. This is a tall order, particularly as the sun still fails to provide due deference to new things, shriveling the new grapes into raisins as surely as it has always done the old ones. Ambient became a genre, a pull-down menu item when one wishes to name a .wav track–a known quantity which formerly eschewed all of the ability to be known. We set out to experience a revolution, and we discovered product instead. The guillotine snips off our cigars, and lights them for us.

The Hypnos label remains my favorite ambient label. Ironically, this is because it provides a set of known quantities. That's not to say, as some suggest, that Hypnos releases have a sameness about them. To the contrary, Hypnos releases a solid band of disparate works, which encompass dark, light, and minimalist ambient. Yet when one buys a Hypnos release, one is reasonably well-assured that one will get a CD that will err on the side of understatement rather than excess, that will feature production values neither over-ripe nor lo-fi, and will neither embrace pop sensibility nor leave behind entirely western melodic conventions. From the artwork to the silver disk to the subtle artistry, one knows what one gets with a Hypnos release.

The very stability of ambient music, though, as it is performed today, poses a challenge for new artists such as Chad Hoefler. One can no longer pretend to be the first person to run sunspots through the sequencer, or the first to make a sine wave sound like the embers of a dying flame. How does an artist go new places in a world of "been there, done that"? Chad Hoefler solves this dilemma capably. In Twilight in the Offing, he provides seven pieces which recognize what has gone before, and synthesizes it into something interesting. Mr. Hoefler does not seek to dwell in the house of one particular genre of ambient. His music instead features elements of dark and light, of tribal and minimalist, and of shimmering melody without needless pop detritus.

The CD begins with "Crimson Lost," a solid pulse of melodic electronica, leavened with an unexpected and slightly unsettling simple percussion line. "Enveloping Shadow" and "Substrata" both feature dark ambient finesses, including the familiar ambient conceit of "Substrata" of creating a soundscape consistent with the exploration of things underground. But Mr. Hoefler declines to be bound to one style of ambient music. The CD's best piece, "Refugia," is a gorgeous wash of shimmering melody, which would not be out of place rendered in guitar on a Jeff Pearce CD. Hoefler shows throughout these pieces that he knows what has gone before, he has learned from the "ambient catalog," but that he seeks to make new sounds from the blending of the old.

Hoefler's work therefore tends to draw together elements from different ambient genres, seeking to achieve a synthesis which references each sub-genre rather than imitate any one sub-movement of the broad field of ambient music. The darker sections, as is customary with Hypnos works, tend to stay more on the minimal side of the spectrum than on the noise side. The lighter sections, also as is customary with Hypnos artists, tends to be melodic but not poppy or saccharine. Hoefler's work blends in percussion and the stray tribal element, but this work does not have an "agenda" to create one particular soundscape. Its key virtue is that it creates a workable blend of things old in an effort to create things new. It is a solid, effective, well-done old-fashioned good listen. Robert Rich capably produces the album, and, not surprisingly, his influence is felt in its pieces. The album's title "Twilight in the Offing," sounds artificially archaic, when a simpler title such as "Almost Twilight" or "Nearly Dusk" would have, to my somewhat poetry-attuned ears, have sounded less mock-grandiose. Otherwise, though, the CD has every shimmer and hum of well-turned ambient music. But it is music for a third generation–the revolt gone past style and displayed on the store shelves.

In a way, the appearance of a Chad Hoefler signals yet another sign that ambient is no longer a movement, but merely another commercial genre. There is nothing wrong with commerce or genres, but this seems a long distance from the theories of the novel and distant places which we all hoped ambient would transport music. Yet I enjoyed this album very much–and if it is to take me no further than my tract home, but provide me with an appreciation of an insightful artist, then I am content.

Available from Hypnos Recordings.

Review by

gurdonark.

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Aug. 6th, 2005 @ 09:11 am Please welcome our new Ambient Reviewer: Gurdonark

Current Music: Andrew Chalk—Shadows from the Album Skies

I want to make a special announcement for

ambient_review readers. This website has long been my own "solo project," of a sorts, in writing about ambient music, so I had never considered, seriously or otherwise, featuring the review work of another. Since, however, my own output of ambient reviews must, by necessity, be perhaps one or two reviews per month these days, I decided to use the site to provide a place for my good and longest LJ friend,

gurdonark to publish his own excellent reviewing work—partly to aid him in publishing his own excellent reviews on an already established site, but also to provide more frequent content for you, the readers, since I cannot spit out reviews with the consistancy of "yesteryear."

I hope you'll be as excited as I am when you read

gurdonark's first review, that of the Hypnos release Twilight in the Offing by Chad Hoefler.

gurdonark is, as you would expect if you read his LJ, a salient and wide-ranging reviewer; his appreciation for the ambient form longstanding, and I am very, very proud to have his material featured here.

So, without further ado, I will post his latest review with the preface that I only hope we see more excellence from him in the near future.

* * *Also, in site-specific news, you may have noticed that the ambientreview.com domain name now sends you directly to the LJ blog page. This is my intention. I have retired the actual site, in favor of the blog aspect, which I find more sympatico to my own sensibilities. It's a lot easier to manage, I can assure you—I was no webmaster, even at the best of times. I hope to have a complete Review Index, of all

ambient_review material, available for browsing quite soon.

Thank you all so much for your patience and support, and, most of all, enjoy the reviews!

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Jul. 7th, 2005 @ 09:12 am The Gate by Terra Ambient

Jeff Kowal's second album as Terra Ambient, The Gate, arrives via his new label Lotuspike. I've never heard his Space for Music debut, The Darker Space, so it is difficult for me to compare The Gate with early Terra Ambient music (much of which, I recall, appeared on the now-defunct MP3.com). So, a blank slate when considering Kowal's brand of darker, tribal ambience.

Tribal ambient is the overarching theme on The Gate, which begins with the stunner opening track, "The Pilgrim's Road"—an insistent desert journey with lovely flute playing, ghostly samples, and a didgeridoo-derived underpinning drone. Simply rendered, yet quite distinctive, this track channels prime tribal-era Steve Roach, so much so that the two artists would be difficult to distinguish if tracks by each were compared against the other. A glance at the liner notes reveals that most of The Gate is created from decidedly "traditional" sound sources: flutes, gongs, drums, guitar, didgeridoo (among many other similar instruments). These trim and focused sound sources are a benefit to Kowal—while many newer ambient releases seem to focus on pure synth meandering and artificial vistas, these sounds root The Gate to Earth, allowing a more visceral, muscular experience, with just the right mixture of ether with tribal spiritualism. At the same time, these purely wind-driven and percussive artifacts ground the music, only allowing it to operate in the limited-by-its-nature tribal-ambient realm. A track like "Majoun," for example, plods along with repetitious percussion, enlivened only by Robert Rich styled harmonic ambience in the background and lovely flute playing reminiscent of both Rich and Tuu. The following track, "Sandstorm Dreaming," is much more satisfying work, again bringing to mind the best of Steve Roach's tribal period on Origins and Artifacts. Distant didgeridoo snakes across an Australian vista, lightning occasionally piercing the dark purple sky, drums marking a ritual somewhere both close and far at once. In a surprising move away from the tone of earlier tracks, "Serpent and Stone," recalls a somewhat Middle Eastern mood in its guitar ambience and driving percussives—it's also the most tuneful track on the album, with a recognizable song structure amidst all the hot, dusty ambience. Finally, "Blood" ends the record with fine didgeridoo playing and searing guitar work combined in a surprising helix of modern and ancient sounds.

To its credit, The Gate stands easily alongside older works by acclaimed tribal-ambient masters like Steve Roach, Tuu, and Jorge Reyes. The music is professionally rendered, well-produced, and luscious in detail. That said, the album never rises above the narrow confines of its sub-genre. As I mentioned, the tribal theme is, naturally, limited by the sources of its sounds, and, as such, The Gate seems to be quite satisfied with plumbing the depths and territories already explored on albums like Vine, Bark & Spore by Roach and Reyes, and Soma by Roach and Rich. Admittedly, you couldn't pick better antecedents, so if these albums (and similar works by Tuu) appeal to you, The Gate is a must-have. For me, it's a little less than satisfying, only because it seems too self-assuredly padding, despite its impressive instrumentality and professionalism, down the same paths of many other albums. Special note goes out to the creator of the album art—stunning imagery in the booklet and front and back covers—a gorgeously rendered package. While The Gate is a completely satisfying tribal-ambient confection, I look forward to future works by Kowal/Terra Ambient attempting to stretch the boundaries of the genre, or perhaps taking a few more musical risks and seeing what fruits the pursuit may bear.

Available directly from Lotuspike.

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Jul. 6th, 2005 @ 02:40 pm on returning

ambient_review returning soon....

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Nov. 5th, 2004 @ 02:34 pm Umbra Records Focus

Editor's Note: I've mentioned here and elsewhere that I'm behind in my reviewing pursuits with regard to certain labels that release notable material so frequently that I've a difficult time keeping up! In light of these prolific release schedules, I'm inaugurating the

ambient_review Focus--an occasional column that will review a larger number of a single label's releases, all with the critical detail you expect from AR, but in a briefer and more focused fashion. Feel free to email or comment and let me know what you think of this method.
* * *Oöphoi should be no stranger to those who feel drone-oriented ambient works are the most appealing examples of the modern form. Taking his cues from the ritual ambient of Alio Die and the droneworlds of peers and collaborators like Mathias Grassow and Klaus Wiese, Gianluigi Gasparetti, the man behind the Oöphoi project, has risen to prominence as one of ambient's brightest talents. He's also one of ambient's biggest supporters through his tireless devotion to the "scene" and his critical 'zine Deep Listenings. It comes as no surprise, then, that Gasparetti should start his own CDR label to provide an "official" outlet for his own work (though he's released most of his albums via CDR for years) and to release work by unknown artists who deserve greater recognition for their efforts. So far, we've seen a highly recommended offering by Sostrah Tinnitus, Nebra, and a label sampler called World of Shadows. As you'll read, there's a lot more to explore from Gasparetti and his cohorts....

( Click for the reviews )

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Nov. 2nd, 2004 @ 02:41 pm Em:t 0004 by various artists

The legendary Em:t Records label, resurrected last year, proves, by releasing a 2004 compilation of all new material, that Em:t 0003 was no nostalgic fluke. When I reviewed Em:t 0003 last year, I found it to be uneven, and felt that "many of the artists on the compilation never rise above past Em:t glories." I wondered if the newest installment would be different. Once again it's a hodgepodge of names from classic Em:t artists to newcomers, so no hints there. The interior quote of Em:t 0004 states, "Forget about good. Good is boring. Good is where you've been before. You'll never reach anywhere if you're always chasing after what's perceived to be good." Perhaps I'm going to get in trouble for wondering, track by track, if Em:t 0004 is any good?

We open with "Is It?" by Pueblo Bonito, the title a challenge similar to the liner notes' opening salvo. Orgone energy lances across the speakers playfully, with a skittery percussive element and a creepy, reverberant synth line. It's difficult to classify this as IDM, though it certainly shares characteristics with Ben Swire's work on the Foundry label. It's an insistent and claustrophobic track, though perhaps a bit repetitive over five minutes.
"Is It?" segues nicely into "Freezebee" by Red Leb, a chittering, buzzing ambient track that marries Biosphere circa Substrata and the technologically derived natural soundscapes of Robert Henke. Midway through the track we're treated to a martial ambient-techno groove. This track gels nicely--just as you're getting comfortable it's over.
Next is Orb alumnus Andy Hughes with "Antillia." Fans of the pop sound of Cologne's Kompakt records (for example, recent offerings by Triola and Thomas Fehlmann) or Mouse on Mars will enjoy this greatly. "Antillia" is a slightly more atmospheric example of these fine artists' material, and at just about five minutes it's the right length for a pop song.
High Skies contributes compilation highlight "Burning Buildings." I don't understand why it seems to be an insult for critics to compare an artist to Boards of Canada. Regardless, I feel the comparison is fair here. While not wholly derivative of their sound, "Burning Buildings" does a very fine job captivating with a similar mood--hip hop beats and strange, dreamy atmospherics combine intoxicatingly. The silenced break in the middle of the track is just masterful. This is ten minutes of downtempo bliss, and I, for one, hope to hear more in this vein from High Skies. BoC and Arovane fans take note.
Sub brings us the appropriately titled "Nautilus," a track swelling with the atmosphere of crashing waves and manipulated plucking of guitar strings (at least that's what it sounds like). Submarine noises blip faintly, and we are swept into a watery world where we may either be shelled organism or hulled transport. Later, jazzy percussives underpin the oceanic swells nicely. Good stuff, if a little traditional and "safe" sounding.
Em:t mainstays Beatsystem return with "Sud," the longest and most atmospheric track on the compilation. As with much of their work, samples and recordings of everyday activity are transmuted into macroscopic soundscapes that are sometimes chilling and creepy, other times heavenly and meditational. This particular track reminds me a bit of Pete Namlook's work with Charles Uzzel-Edwards on the Create discs--sonic interpretations of geographical locations. Beatsystem's southward view here skews toward impenetrable clouds of sound that often take an oceanic flavor (moreso than its predecessor on the compilation!) The track feels a little long, and I felt my attention waning after a time.
Next is International Peoples Gang's "AC Harmonics," which reminded me a little of Ulrich Schnauss's sunny atmospheres if he decided to go full-on ambient. Happy samples, a bouncy beat, and synth combine to form a Spring-scented electronic treat.
Fognode's "Thin Faces" is next, a darker approach than the preceding tracks. Haunting synth pads and a stuttery beat for the darkened dancefloor create a tentative environment--are we supposed to dance or dream here? Obviously answers aren't provided, though I'll admit I found the beats enslaving after a time, and was relieved to see the track completely shift to jazz-dreamtime at the halfway mark. The atmospheric sonics were impressive (reminding me of Robert Rich with a techno-percussive slant) but I found the track, as a whole, to be unfocused with too many stylistic shifts within ten minutes.
Farfield's "Lure of Time" is a synth-derived ambient-jazz composition with deep bass, lovely piano, and a Bark Psychosis feel. This is in the spirit of the original Em:t series, which featured tracks like this sandwiched between Woob or Thomas Köner--always a pleasant, weird, and occasionally frustrating juxtaposition. It works nicely here too.
Finally, we have Gel-sol's "Jiva," which ought to please even the most hardened fans of the City Centre Offices or Morr Music labels. Bright synth, a fluid beat, and cool samples reference the classic ambient-techno of the early nineties, but with a modern and relevant shine that's truly impressive. Gel-sol's debut is due out from Em:t soon--if this track is any indication, don't miss it.

In total, I found Em:t 0004 to be light-years ahead of its compilational predecessor, and a sign of great things to come from the fledgling reborn label. The label's focus seems clearer accordingly--fans who found the original Em:t compilations intriguing, diverse, and challenging will find the 2004 installment similarly styled, but not slavish in referencing earlier triumphs. While, as with most compilations, not everything was to my taste, I found the quality of each track to be particularly high--especially the standouts by High Skies, Gel-sol, and International Peoples Gang. If Em:t 0003 left the jury still out whether the resurrection of Em:t itself was necessary or relevant, Em:t 0004 is sure to be the release opening doors to new listeners. Stay tuned; Em:t part two is clearly just beginning to gain momentum.

Available directly from Em:t.

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Oct. 9th, 2004 @ 02:14 pm Bibimbap by various artists; Fluidities by Jonathan Hughes

Two new releases by the intriguing Foundry label have crossed my desk over the last few, warm, months. Both share fascinating concepts; one of which challenges the essential way we listen to music in the first place. Foundry projects are always intellectually rigorous and adventurous, compared to much ambient and electronic fare, while still maintaining a sense of fun and exploration.

First up is a compilation, the first I've reviewed in a while. Ambient music used to thrive on such compilations, but, sadly, they are far less frequent these days--it remains the best way to be introduced to new artists while also showcasing intriguing album concepts and themes. Foundry's Bibimbap is based around the idea of the Korean dish created from a variety of ingredients. The overarching concept of the album, then, is a mixture of disparate and unused tracks by different artists that total to a satisfying meal.

The first track is by newcomer Ben Swire, whose Equilibrium ep was reviewed here last year. "Amalgam" occupies the same chilled IDM territory as that ep, but feels stronger over five minutes than that release did in fifteen. Melancholy synth pads and a clicky beat lead to a dramatic tympani-like kickdrum. A symphonic techno mood is created, which culminates in a belltone march. Vocal samples and more luscious pads round out "Amalgam" nicely. This track represents the Bibimbap concept well, as many disparate elements are mixed to create a track that is more than the sum of its parts.
Next is Ambient Review favorite Saul Stokes, whose "Cyclops Afternoon" feels like an outtake from the Fields sessions, mixed with some of the more chilled moods of Outfolding. Stokes's compilation tracks seem to have the same tones, and this is quite similar to the track on Databloem's Collection 2: Moving, with lovely and strange synth soloing and a mid-tempo urban groove (though urban by way of Trantor). Nice work, if not as memorable as Stokes's recent album material, especially the excellent new tracks on Radiate.
Forrest Fang contributes "Filling the Bowl," a mixture of somewhat chaotic (though always pretty) ambience and gamelan, much like the material on 2000's excellent Gongland. It's been too long since that album, and this track causes me to hope another Fang full length won't be far behind. "Filling the Bowl" is relatively short, but the burbling ambience combined with Fang's synths melds quite neatly in the time span--a perfect amount of every ingredient makes for one of the best tracks on the disc.
Next is Foundry label owner M. Bentley under his eM guise with the marvelously titled "The Twilight Pageant of the Bibimbots." The pageant begins with reverberant post-industrial sounds that strained my speakers. Gradually, a mechanical dirge that recalls Maria's strange dance in Lang's Metropolis exposes itself. It's a great track with an ethnic and haunting feel, with imagery of humanistic, though clearly artifical, forms dancing like mannequins in the twilight. A highlight.
The second half of Bibimbap is populated by artists I'm unfamiliar with. It's also the point on the disc where things really start to get adventurous. Earwicker's "Entree" recalls both Popol Vuh's "Ich mache einen Spiegel" and more abstract ambient-techno from the late-nineties. It's a great track with a lot of strange sonics, both samples and tones, lancing across the speakers, all propelled by a downtempo beat that actually reminded me a little of Skinny Puppy, believe it or not.
Chris de Giere's "Kimchi Tastes of Summer" is populated by uneasy blips and bleeps underpinned by subtle synth ambience. The track doesn't quite gel for me, even though the underlying synth is quite lush and gorgeous. Interestingly glitchy crackles intercede here and there, aligning this track with newer laptop composers, but, for the most part, this track is fairly forgettable.
Thermal, former M-1 Alternative (remember them?) and AToI member, gives us "Muse of Exploration," a track that represents the perfect mixture of dreampop and ambient electronics, similar to music by Kiln and other artists who tread the line between indierock and ambient. I must admit I missed the heyday of C'est la Morte records, but it's good to know the artists are still out there, embracing new styles and staying relevant. The guitar work on "Muse of Exploration" is not to be missed by fans of Darla records' small electronic stable, and this track ranks as my favorite on the compilation.
Finally, Dean Santomieri closes the compilation with the short, poignant, and poetic "Their hearts burst the bars, but their necks broke against the glass," a brief exploration in cut-up scissory electronics. It's a little like Nurse with Wound, but short enough that it maintains novelty without wearing on the listener. Cool stuff, though obtuse, and a mysterious and fun way to end the compilation.

Bibimbap is a needed throwback to the days when compilations meant something, and were a method of exploration into artists one was unfamiliar with. I suppose, to some extent, the internet, with its readily available MP3 and RealAudio sound samples, has negated the importance of compilations, making all new music available to anyone with a connection. Discs like Bibimbap remind me, though, that the genre still needs diverse outlets or expression, just as a meal needs a number of ingredients to be truly satisfying. While the artists I was familiar with on Bibimbap contribute tracks less strong than their recent albums, the compilation as a total is an effective, though perhaps not essential, showcase for newer talents who might otherwise escape notice. I, for one, hope to see other labels follow Foundry's lead in bringing back the compilation, and sustaining the genre in the process.
* * *

Next up is Jonathan Hughes's remarkable follow-up to his album Trillium (both released on Foundry). Fluidities, a two CD set, is of note on a number of levels. First, it contains eleven new Hughes tracks. Second, it contains eleven tracks by some very notable names in modern ambient/electronic music: Ian Boddy, Tetsu Inoue, High Skies (formerly Em:t artist Gas), AToI, Saul Stokes, and others. Third, the two discs are meant to be played simultaneously. Yes, one can create 121 different six-minute "fantasy" collaborations by the artists on disc one and the artists on disc two, if a person has two CD players available to them in the same room. And if you rip all of the tracks to MP3 (or have two copies of the set), you can have even more combinations of songs ... perfect for those who'd like to see Tetsu Inoue and Ian Boddy pretending to create their own version of 2350 Broadway in 2004. This fun concept was an impossibility for me, technologically anyhow, so I'll review the separate tracks on Fluidities based on their own merit. It's a sprawling set, so I'll simply focus on highlights to prevent the review from taking over my entire webspace.

Disc one:
Jonathan Hughes's "Snowdrift" is an absolutely lovely piano driven piece with Budd melodies mixing with simple sonic manipulations to form an update of the crystalline environments of The Plateaux of Mirror. Saul Stokes's "Summer" is an uncharacteristically environmental track, similar, for me, to his Edge of the Forest. It also, despite the title, fits very nicely with the icy atmospheres of the previous Hughes track. It's obvious Stokes pays a lot of attention to creating his music, as I've yet to hear a weak track by him, whether on a compilation or full-length. Hughes's "Photogenic" is an underwater, reverberant track, reminding me a little of the trippy, sparse excursions by Silent Records artist Pelican Daughters. Gorgeous and minimal. Next is "Memory II" by Jussi and Jaana Väisänen, and is also one of my favorite songs on the album. It's Stars of the Lid conjoined with haunting vocal samples in not-English and strange unknowable clunks and noises, like a field recording of the spectral plane. Haunting and perfect. I found Susanne Brokesch's track, "Hostile Phone" to sound somewhat dated at first. Worth mentioning is its transformation into something that sounds like no less than Cluster's deep space oddities. Jonathan Hughes collaborates with Naryan Padmanabha on the unusual "Feel the Photons" with sparse, bright ambience, bizarre random noises, and a guitar line combining into a futuristic mantra-jam session. In a way, this sounds like what Bark Psychosis's new album would have been if it were focused more on the electronic spectrum. Great stuff. AToI contributes the watery "Dr. John Lilly's Precise Instructions (instrumental)" which bubbles along like Michael Mantra's psychoactive material. Dean Santomieri's "Seahorse Pajama Haiku" is nothing like his Bibimbap track; this time it's all lovely synth tones and more underwater ambience. A pretty, diverse track and completely a surprise after the cutup I'd previously experienced. Finally, Hughes's "Ophelia, the Daycleaner" closes disc one with a high-pitched and organ-flavored reverence. It's a holy sound, a music of the spheres.

Disc two:
The second disc begins with ambient legend Tetsu Inoue. I have to admit that Inoue lost me after World Receiver; I haven't felt brave enough to explore his microsound journeys, deeming them a little too inaccessible for my tastes. "Soft Dome" may just prove me wrong, however. The experimental and chaotic textures are here, but they combine to form a relaxing river of microsound, quite easy to get caught up in. M. Bentley's "April" is an extremely minimal piano piece, lovely, stark, and one that I imagine mixes well with many of the other tracks on the set. Echoes of modern classical by Bentley diversify Fluidities, enriching the total in the process. "Two Thirteen" by Hughes and David Mussen reminds me a little of Robert Rich's work, specifically the times Rich appears to create the sounds of an alien environment: glurp and the strange resonances emanating from unseen lifeforms. Hughes's "Reda" has a Biosphere flavor, more fragile icy environments and high-pitched radio transmissions from beyond. High Skies contributes exemplary work of contrasting textures that wisp in the air like different perfumes on "The Shipping Forecast." The collaboration between M. Bentley and Hughes yields "Atlantic," their version of the sinking of the Titanic, just as it hits bottom, perhaps. This may very well be my favorite track on disc two. UK master-synthesist Ian Boddy's "Suburbia" sure doesn't sound like what's going on outside my window. This is birdsong out of the final scenes of David Lynch's Blue Velvet, suburbia altered, though recognizable, but somehow off. Totally unlike much of the Boddy material I've heard, and simply breathtaking. The final Hughes track "Luminaria" is subterranean, the gurgle of hot forces beneath the earth's crust. Interstitial closes the entire set with "Indelible Ink" a typically strange, dark work of bassy harmonics that conjures claustrophobic imagery--enough to darken even the lightest tracks on the set, I'd imagine.

Fluidities has a conceptual quality that's hard to beat, and the inclusion of so many excellent artists further sweetens the deal. Each track, most conjuring the liquid qualities of the title, is with merit. Of course, I enjoyed the Hughes tracks the most, and even created a burned disc that featured them alone, so I could enjoy a makeshift new album. I can't comment on how the individual tracks might sound when combined with each other as directed in the liner notes, but the tracks are minimal and fluid enough to accommodate many combinations. Hughes proves with Fluidities that he is a forward thinking artist capable of producing interesting concepts and musical directions that should satisfy even the most hardened ambient fans. The tracks are always adventurous, without sacrificing listenability, and stand up to repeated stand-alone plays. In essence, Fluidities is an intriguing concept that does not require participation on the part of the listener for maximum enjoyment. It's one of the Foundry's most interesting releases and is highly recommended--it's a fascinating and diverse work that only increases my appetite for more of Jonathan Hughes's forward-thinking music.

Both Bibimbap and the double-disc Fluidities are available from The Foundry.

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Sep. 12th, 2004 @ 12:29 pm Oxana by Igneous Flame & Cold Distances by Off the Sky

To risk sounding like an embittered listener, because I certainly am not, 2004 has been a rather lackluster year for pure space-music and floating ambience. While the usual suspects have all submitted very fine ambient efforts (some releasing a few in just 2004!), many of these works have been in tribal or experimental modes, ignoring the drifting backgrounds and sonic landscapes that comprise the backbone of the ambient genre. I sit at my desk in mid-September listening and wondering, briefly, if space music and drifting ambience is played out, a victim of too many artists and too many releases, all with similar themes threatening to drown the others out.

I've begun this review with something of a downer, I know, but it serves my purpose to introduce the two albums of my review; two albums that are unrelated by artist and label, but share similar moods and intents. They also represent the converse of the above, perhaps imagined, 2004 trend--two excellent releases by new artists, each minimal and drifting, each memorable and representative in its own way. Perhaps 2004 hasn't been so bad for space music after all?

I'll begin with Oxana by UK newcomer Pete Kelly, aka Igneous Flame, whose previous album Tolmon I received when I started reviewing ambient here. That album was a near miss for me; professionally created, with all the hallmarks of great ambient, but lacking the cohesiveness and sheen to make it a truly memorable and original release. Any misgivings I might have had for this previous effort are blown away by Oxana, a completely fascinating, slowly shifting, collection of deep, though not dark, ambient tracks.

Kelly's ambience appears to be largely synth-created--apart from what might be processed guitar, I could detect no natural instruments, or at least none that haven't been heavily treated or tampered with in some way. Oxana begins with the aptly-titled Formless, something of a harbinger for the deep tones to come. Sonorous, gusty sonics evoke deep space vacuum, similar to the more minimalist tracks by Zero Ohms. "Glacia-Tor" sounds like an ice planet whirling gently around a distant sun, its revolving tones soothing and bassy. "Novar" manages to recall for me the bright ambience of both early VidnaObmana, Wolfgang Voigt's Gas project, and the interstellar strums of Jeff Pearce. "Isolder" continues this musical reminder, though this time the sounds are vaguely glitched-out and extended toward the horizon line. "Geiss" reminds me of Vir Unis's very fine ambient works, before he soared off into numerous beat-driven albums. "Prismatic" continues the similarities to both Jeff Pearce and Vir Unis, as though the two musicians combined in an imaginary collaboration. "Vapour Trace" darkens the mood considerably, recalling the deep space territories plumbed by Oöphoi and Tau Ceti, or Life Garden's creepy mysticism. This is one of Oxana's most powerful tracks; subterranean sounds, lovely synth backgrounds, an air of interstellar mystery. Very fine stuff. You can't get more descriptive than "Space," a softly ululating track that manages to portray claustrophobic dark space and vast, open solar vistas simultaneously. "Dark Material" sonically describes the cover art of Oxana--marvelous black space, punctuated by slashes of deep red lightbeams or gas trails. The final track, "Lost at Sea," is a foreboding drone-based composition, reminding me heavily of Rapoon's darker material, complete with long wave shipping forecast samples--always an alien, though strangely comforting, sonic source.

Kelly's Oxana is a very fine work, though not without flaws. Many of the tracks sound similar--while creating an album length mood, they do tend to blend over sixty-six minutes (and also make each track rather difficult to describe on its own terms). The sound of the album, production-wise, is murky, often limiting the range and effect of headphone listening. These points do not, however, prevent me from recommending this album highly, especially for those ambient listeners enamored by the Hypnos label, specifically Jeff Pearce's lovely, vast, guitar-created atmospheres or the seemingly limitless drift of Vir Unis's older albums on the Green House Music label. Oxana is a perfect disc for late-night stargazing into the heavens, or the sweet time as one drifts gently into a night's slumber. Indeed, Kelly's created a fine example of "night music" where the sounds of the record and your own imagination are the only light sources. Recommended.

The second album bucking the 2004 trend is also a debut on the already-impressive Databloem CD-R sublabel DataObscura. Jason Corder, recording as Off the Sky, submits Cold Distances, which I'll introduce by saying that it is one of the finest debuts I've ever had the pleasure to hear, and that it will be ranking high on my top ten list for 2004 (if not the top spot), and is perhaps one of the most impressive ambient debuts of the 2000s. If you are a fan of Biosphere's glacial driftworks, the strangely emotional computer-songs of Tim Hecker, or even Thomas Köner's inhospitably cold environments, Off the Sky's remarkable debut is a must-have.

Cold Distances appears to have been created solely on soft-synths. These synths sound largely alien, though still environmental, as though these imaginary instruments are the only true way to represent the feelings and textures of the overarching mood; a mood of, well, cold distances. Whether these distances are the arctic tundra or the infinities of deep space (the track titles seem to suggest the former), it's difficult not to be swept away by the evocative sounds and textures presented by Corder over nearly sixty-five minutes. "A Thousand Year Formation" combines crackling vinyl LP/fireplace noises with gusting winds, arctic and solar; bassy drones; and Biosphere-esque organic synth tones and inexplicable samples. It is at once soothing and mysterious, as though the listener is immediately clued into a microworld of sound that was previously undetectable. "Morning Thaw" is representative of the glitched-out, blissed-out sonics of Christopher Willits; chittering synths disintegrate into nothingness, an intriguing fifty seconds. "Beneath the Ice Shelf" is minimal and haunting--similar in feel to Tim Hecker's "Music for Tundra," while not as sonically overpowering. "Light Peaks" returns to the glitch-basis of track two, its constantly shifting tones chopped up in under forty seconds. "Polar Drift" is sure to satisfy Thomas Köner junkies, a strange beat underpinning--like a softly intoning buoy or the ticking of clocks--the cold synth ambience. Electronic crackle, like white noise, snowblinds us, and we attempt to press on through blizzard conditions, growing more and more sleepy, until the effortless drift threatens to pull us away forever. "Cold Distances to a Warm Place" is unquestionably my favorite track, carrying forth the tick-tock from its predecessor and shifting it into a heartbeat. This heartbeat brings us inside ourselves, and when the absolutely blissful synth sweeps glide down, it's chills-time of the highest order. Do you remember that Ray Bradbury story where the spacemen are blasted out of their rocket, to glide forever alone in space? Here's your soundtrack. I could listen to this for hours--perfect melancholy. "Winter's Torpid Flow" crackles cheerily, maintaining the heartbeat from the previous track. Down deep under the ice, something is melting briefly, shifting slowly, creating gorgeous ice formations that may never be viewed by human eyes. Ten more minutes of softly-propulsive sonic bliss, punctuated by fascinating machine noises generated by dreaming computers. "Maker's Folly" synth-tones toll for thee--hissing synths and gonging into infinity, up and out, or perhaps down and under, if the undersea feel of later in the track is any indication. Finally, "Solid Surface, Soft Center" closes the work with a reverent feel; soft, organic tones, mechanical chitters, tampered-with synth meandering. A gentle end to an understated, though terrifically powerful, work.

Cold Distances is a perfect album. It's modern, soothing, experimental, emotional, and captivating. It's the kind of album that reveals more detail with each listen, is more satisfying with every play, will reward you no matter what mood you might be in. I won't mince words: this album is pure magic, don't miss it. My highest recommendation.

Igneous Flame's Oxana is available on Chillfactor 10 records.
Off the Sky's Cold Distances is out on Databloem's DataObscura sublabel.

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Aug. 24th, 2004 @ 01:16 pm Fever Dreams by Steve Roach

Steve Roach is certainly no stranger to these "pages" with a constant flow of albums on various labels in different styles, but always with the same attention to quality and diversity that has made him one of America's pre-eminent electronic musicians. After a series of very fine albums, including the staggering four-CD Mystic Chords and Sacred Spaces, Roach shifts gears slightly with a more immediately accessible, though no less representative, series of trance-jam albums, of which Fever Dreams is part one. The instrumentation used ought to be familiar to those who've been following Roach's travels over the past few years, though it is used to a significantly different effect on this particular album.

Fever Dreams contains four extremely long tracks, each an extended meditation largely around one theme per track. "Wicked Dream" begins the album with Roach's vast synth-atmospheres backed with languid, down-tempo percussion--a loping tribal theme, rather than the intense drums of the very fine Trance Spirits. A snaky bassline, courtesy of Patrick O'Hearn, enters the fray, bringing a Bill Laswell inflection to the track, like a more ambient Ekstasis, minus Nicky Skopelitis's incendiary guitarwork. Though the title conjures up a sticky tribal nightmare, the sound here is more sexual, grooving, and insistent. The underlying synth washes are excellent, managing to keep the track somewhat progressive over its almost nineteen minute length. Later in the track, the atmosphere takes over entirely, as the bass and percussion are abandoned. I found this track to be rather long for its weight, the sounds remaining too static, the bass too repetitive, as though O'Hearn felt any divergence from the groove would lead to jazzy jamming. Perhaps a wise decision, but the track suffers from sameness over its extreme length. "Fever Pulse" utilizes similar elements, though is more dream-like and nebulous when compared with track one. A percussion loop filled in with Roach's signature guitar atmospheres drives the track forward; a gently paced, though intense, journey above humid forests--both relaxing and entrancing. Will Merkle's basswork provides just the right amount of deep shading--it is never obtrusive, and manages to swell along with the atmospheres without overpowering them. The shortest track at ten and a half minutes, "Fever Pulse" gets closer to the idea of psychoactive dream journeys than its predecessor on the album. Next is "Tantra Mantra," the thirty minute centerpiece of the album, and also something of a statement of intent for the overarching series, I gather. The sexual insistency from the first track returns, but is more understated and alluring. Excellent, varied percussion by Byron Metcalfe conjoined with guitar and bass atmospheres, and tense synth sonics, make for the best and most quietly intense track on the CD. "Tantra Mantra" is ten minutes longer than "Wicked Dream" and goes by in a sweltering flash; one of Roach's strongest pieces in the tribal vein since Origins and Artifacts. Hopefully this sound will inform the later albums in the series. Finally, "Moved Beyond" is a stripped-down version of "Tantra Mantra" with ghostly guitar harmonics, bass pulses, and somewhat shrill slices of sound that recall InnerZone and Spirit Dome. This track is effective in conveying the fever dream; a familiar, though foreign, mish-mash of fears, desires, and strange associations, tied up in surprising and unexpected ways.

As a complete album, I found Fever Dreams to be inconsistent, though the best tracks far outweigh those that seem weak or less than three-dimensional. Personally, I prefer Roach's recent, blisteringly intense, tribal works (The Serpent's Lair, Trance Spirits), over Fever Dreams's somewhat "slow and low" offering. This album does, however, have a lot going for it, especially for those Roach-listeners who felt his recent material was either "too ambient" or "too loud and tribal." Indeed, Fever Dreams would make a great introduction for the listener curious about Roach's sound, but mystified about where to begin in his vast discography. Special praise should go to the creator of the artwork, who manages to portray the strange, colorful, earthly sound environment of the music with the album graphics: a jumble of ancient ruins, natural detritus, swirled and blurry colors. While Fever Dreams may not be the strongest work I've heard from Roach, it does signal an intriguing new direction in his musical career. This career seems more and more a journey in pursuit of an artistic ideal with every Roach release, a constant reach toward expressing the ineffable, humanistic unconscious, with varying degrees of success. Regardless, Fever Dreams continues to prove that following that muse along with Roach is one of electronic music's most intoxicating delights.

A Projekt records release.

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Aug. 10th, 2004 @ 05:21 pm Discrete Carbon by Dwight Ashley

True story: when I received Dwight Ashley's first solo album, Discrete Carbon, I played it at once, and promptly left the room. My home office is one of the few rooms of the house equipped with speakers, and it's where I do most of my deep and concentrated listening. That night, I slipped Ashley's album into the player, and was called away from the room almost immediately, whether it was for a phone call or some other distraction, I can't remember. Needless to say, as I chatted on the phone, or whatever, Discrete Carbon played on. Every once in a while, I'd hear sounds filter out of my office: a bassy tone, a swatch of heavenly ambience, an unusual texture; all far-away sounding, as though I was picking up transmissions from a distant radio broadcast. Briefly, my office had been transformed into an alien zone, one I was not part of, one I could only experience as an outsider.

While I could never recreate the oblique experience of distracted, distanced listening, an active listen to Discrete Carbon yields its own distinct pleasures. Track one, "Eightfold Way," features synth swells, and unusual organic sonic blossoms, similar to the glurp of Robert Rich. It's a brief track, but also a statement of intent of sorts, as the tracks that follow are similar in mood. "It Happened in November" follows, with melancholy synth strains, the occasional piano tinker, and unique sonics. A sample sounds suspiciously like a crowd cheering, and is that a car horn I hear? We don't quite find out exactly what happened in November, and that's part of the mystery and charm of the track. "Katalepsis" shoots us into the ionosphere with mechanical chittering and interstellar broadcasts between astronauts. This is a tense composition with haunting textures and field recordings of unknown origin. A lovely synth passage begins, amidst the white noise, which fades in and out like fitful slumber--an oneiric and adventurous track. "I Thought It Was There" is similarly uneasy, as though something inexplicable lurks just beyond our field of vision. A waveform oscillates with synth textures that remind me of Jeff Greinke's work; pleasantly radiant. "Three Insects" is claustrophobic and deep, with a swiftly beating heart underscoring the atmospherics along with muted piano. It's a short but rewarding track, recalling the womb each of us has experienced, but none of us remember. "Denial" is pure post-industrial soundscaping, with roaring tones, reverberant guitar strums, metallic clanging; uneasy listening, but still cohesive and interesting, though foreboding. "A Colossus Succumbs" is my favorite track on the album, an angelic chorus subtly phased, harmonic, and drifting, conjoined with the strange sounds that are present on each track of the album. "Eat Me, Drink Me" is subterranean ambience again, this time submerged beneath dark waters which gradually open up into reverberant synth symphonics, always with an undertone of darkness. "Examined by Tweezers" is the longest track on the album, at almost nine and a half minutes, and also the most static. Drifting textures and ghostly ambience recalling the lighter Rapoon works flow lightly and gently--a nice floater after all the tension on earlier tracks. "Carbon" is the last track on the album (but not really), ending it in an unsettling cut-up that reminds me of submerged Severed Heads. Strange, and somewhat frightening. A few tracks of silence, and we're treated to a hidden bonus track of lively piano playing that recalls the playful work of Erik Satie, though the illusion threatens to collapse at any moment.

Discrete Carbon is a constantly surprising, inventive album, never held down by excessive darkness and never unnecessarily sweet or precious. While the tracks presented here never achieve album-length cohesion, the overall feel of the album is moody, deep, and mysterious. If today's ambient artists can be faulted for erring on the side of stratospheric, drone-oriented, spacious material, Ashley provides a refreshing tonic with a constantly diverse and varied sound palette that recalls the more adventurous works of Jeff Greinke. In fact, compared to many recent ambient works, Ashley's album is decidedly iconoclastic, with ambiguous and fascinating track titles, non-spacey cover artwork, and difficult to pigeonhole musical choices. This album is for the adventurous listener, there is no doubt. If much modern ambient and electronic music seems too cut and dried or obvious, Discrete Carbon ought to have more than enough surprises and engaging passages to intrigue over repeated listens. It's also a promising first effort, and here's hoping Ashley decides to release more work in the near future.

Available directly from Dwight Ashley.

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Aug. 1st, 2004 @ 10:23 am The Last Bright Light by Jim Cole & Mathias Grassow

One of the more complimentary pairings in bright, intense ambient music is the collaborative work of ambient drone artist Mathias Grassow and overtone singer Jim Cole. Their first album together, The Hollow, was a lovely mixture of Cole's overtone vocalizations with Grassow's hypnotic singing bowl and synth drones, along with a number of sparse nature samples and field recordings. The wait's been long for the follow-up, mostly due to label difficulties, but finally, three years on, we have The Last Bright Light.

This new effort is dramatically different from their previous album; the sound sources here are entirely comprised of both Cole's and Grassow's looped overtone voices. While synth is only used on one track, the sounds resemble the soaring drones heard on Grassow's recent Amplexus label releases and Cole's last two transcendent solo albums. The album begins softly with two tracks of ululating vocal drones that interweave gently. Both "The Last Bright Light" and "New Beginning" are brief, airy, tone poems, all highlighted with Cole's higher-pitched voice ethereally soaring over the basic drones. "Starlit Shadows" begins to intensify, and, to some degree, darken the atmosphere, as the drones take on not an air of menace, but of drama and intensity, much in the same mood as Cole's track "Transformations" from Godspace. The soundworld created here is spare and minimal, though no less beautiful (and, to some degree, melancholy) as a result. "Flare" is another brief, powerful track, with concentrated, churning drones and the natural ambience of the surf. Though environmental samples are used in moderation, the effect is striking, creating a psychoactive zone where earthly sounds are shown to be celestial and otherworldly. "Fell Radiance" returns to the deeper zones of "Starlit Shadows," with overtone soloing cascading over the soft drones. There's a buoyant quality to the sound here, as if its currents will lift the listener off the earth to be buffeted gently by air gusts warm and cold. Ghostly sounds wisp into the landscape, as though we have inadvertently and peacefully connected with the spirit realm. "Longing" has the feeling of ancient melancholy, reaching across time's distances--through sound, we have connected with some long-dead human's sadness, transmuted over the years, forgotten, now more reminiscent of unearthly beauty than pain or anguish. "Fusion" is perhaps the best track on the album (though I hate to play favorites)--it is also the longest track at nearly eighteen minutes, and the only track to feature synth atmospheres. These atmospheres are instantly recognizable as Grassow's, melding so cleanly with the overtone vocals that the two are difficult to discern from each other. The intensity of this track, beginning at around the three and a half minute mark, is difficult to describe. Epic is the word that comes to mind, as the synth drone falls away into an absolutely stunning vocal drone that recalls for me ancient ruins, inexplicably huge statues and architecture, beauty so bright and distant one has a hard time understanding it. I've dallied with talk like this in previous reviews of Cole's tremendous solo work--this is the real deal, a feeling absent even in most of the best of ambient music. When the natural sounds of surf filter in, the swelling, harmonic, intoxicating atmospheres represent the eternal power of ambient music--perhaps above all other musical forms of expression--in expressing the ineffable. After that, "Light Withering" almost seems anti-climactic, though no less impressive than the rest of the album. Deep and lovely tones close the album as it began: wisping, ethereal, unabashedly beautiful.

Once again, Cole and Grassow do not disappoint, presenting a vast and gorgeous album culled from "simple" sound sources. As good as The Hollow was, The Last Bright Light is far, far better. Though I certainly have no problem with ambient albums comprised solely of synthetic textures, Cole and Grassow remind that discarding the trappings of too much gear and artifice can be a wholly positive and enriching musical strategy. Ambient in the best possible way, The Last Bright Light manages to be both atmospheric and captivating--the kind of record one can spin all day, no matter what mood one might be in. It is enchanting from start to finish, and well-deserving of my highest recommendation.

On AtmoWorks, and available from both Mathias Grassow and Jim Cole.

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Jul. 16th, 2004 @ 01:31 pm Once Upon a Time by Spielerei

One of the better new electronic/ambient labels out there is the Fax-records-inspired Databloem, and its DataObscura CDR sublabel. Label heads Dennis Knopper and Anthony Paul Kerby have proven time and again that they've excellent tastes regarding new and unheard talent in electronic music, over the short time Databloem's been in existence. We already know that Kerby himself is a fine musician, recording as both The Circular Ruins and Lammergeyer. Knopper, on the other hand, waited some time before dropping his own musical debut on DataObscura, Once Upon a Time, under the moniker Spielerei.

Spielerei first appeared on the Databloem compilation Collection 2: Moving, with the track "Displaying Movements"--displaying "slick sequences, synth washes, and dreamy atmosphere recall[ing] the very best of Göttsching's mid-seventies material, but with a modern approach." That track is also featured on Once Upon a Time in all its bright, sequenced glory. First, though, we have "1 Out of 2000" which sounds rather like a Circular Ruins track; lancing synth solos, bubbly e-percussion, and strange, nearly chaotic electronic textures and elements which flitter wildly. It almost reminds of an outtake from The Circular Ruins's Empathy Test at times, though the sound here is a bit moodier. Obviously Kerby and Knopper's styles are aligned not just taste-wise. After the fine "Displaying Movements," we move to "Kissing Fish," a stunner of an ambient track. There's an old-school Vangelis, circa Blade Runner feel here, as elegiac synth sweeps are shot through with strange electronic whooshings. We're above the city where it never seems to stop raining, our swift craft shielding us not just from the moisture, but also from the city's disharmony below. Later, the track descends into deep ambience still further, with a drone not unlike Tetsu Inoue was capable of during his Fax-label years. Terrific stuff. "Incarnation" is also deeply ambient, with enveloping drones lightened by electronic sounds that pan across the speakers like slow lightning (there's an oxymoron, for you). The sun comes out halfway through with a quite bright ambient-techno synth melody; gorgeous and enlivening. A hint of percussion, and you've got a great ambient track that morphs seamlessly into an ambient-techno anthem. "Once Upon a Time" is a nebulous combination of strange mechanical grindings, electronic textures, and vocal samples--chaotic, but still soothing. Like some of the earlier tracks on Inoue's similar-sounding Organic Cloud, this doesn't quite gel over its length. "Mistaken Identity" returns to bright ambience with lovely synth that recalls Mixmaster Morris's material; bright, psychedelic, and somehow watery. Faint synth-soloing is also present, enhancing this brief track greatly. "Spielerei" isn't exactly indicative of the artist's sound as one might expect. Namlook-ian synth solos and glitchy rhythm sequences remind me more strongly of Fax material than the rest of the album suggests. Nevertheless, considering his recent output, this track out-Namlooks Namlook. Next, "Central Heating" is indeed warm, as soothing synthwaves shower the listener in a light and welcoming way. Dramatic synth filters in, rising to a Klaus Schulze crescendo, and the track fades out into its successor. "Symphysodon" is the longest track on the album, and is also, in my opinion, the best. More synth drones cascade, with ghostly voices, unusual electronic textures, and great synth solos. By track's end, a cool groove, recalling once again Tetsu Inoue, is introduced, quietly propelling the album to its close.

I bring up classic Fax material often in this review, but by no means is Spielerei's debut slavishly copy-catting the works on that label. Instead, he references the material, not to mention many other classic electronic musicians, and creates his own, original work, informed by past masters. In fact, Fax fans will want to look out for Once Upon a Time, as it will remind them of what they enjoyed about the label during its golden years, without being derivative or dated, as some old Fax material is. It's worth seeking out, especially if you've found recent Fax offerings lacking. While Once Upon a Time does suffer from sameness between individual tracks, particularly on the latter half of the album, it's a fine and well-executed album of intriguing electronic music. Knopper proves here that he can create great music as well as select great new artists for his label. You likely won't find a better pure synth-music album in 2004.

On the Databloem sublabel DataObscura.

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