Spacey ambient drones and depth of sound make Seconds Before Awakening’s Seven a piece of headphone-required listening. It’s the latest entry in an ongoing project designed to create off-to-sleep ambient based on a formula that Seconds Before Awakening has developed. I stole this explanation from him off his last.fm page: “…each track…was created using a mathematical formula depending on the length of the track and how many notes were played divided by the key the song (each key I gave a certain number).” His personal research into sleep cycles also informs the music. Overall, the tone is warm and the feel is liquid. These unobtrusive waves of tone just wash forward, pick up tiny hints of shadow in spots, and circle quietly back around to begin again. Nothing groundbreaking here, just solid ambient. But hearing it and knowing that there are six previous experiments to dive into, I know I’ll be listening to more Seconds Before Awakening soon.
Available at archive.org.
I can tell you, with some degree of certainty, that I have just listened to Dissolved’s Snowy Psychoplasmics. What I cannot tell you, with any degree of certainty, is what I just listened to. This wild ride of random sound, glitch beats, audio samples and more can be a bit like watching TV while holding down the “change channel” button on the remote. Spoken word, PA announcements, folks songs sung straight up, children singing
Built on field recordings made during trips to Indonesia and Southeast Asia, Penjaga Insaf’s new release, Sama Sadja, almost immediately takes on a mantle that is dark, ritualistic and redolent of old magicks. The duo of Henry Emich and Ingo Sauerbrey escort their listeners through foreign and, at times, unnerving landscapes. The atmospheres are humid and swarming with sound, hypnotically dense but always packing a moment of sonic surprise to jar you, in the best possible way, out of your mental lull. This is a disc you become part of. The field recordings make up the bulk of the music here, with Emich and Sauerbrey sagely augmenting them with quiet, droning spaces that serve to perfectly amplify the rising sensations. Listen to “Pulang,” where the pair let a tribal chant take the lead to create a sort of sacred space, the two adjusting levels and background sounds, mixing moments together to turn the whole into a ceremony that’s a bit dark and yet uplifting to the spirit.
Steve Rose’s sophomore outing, The Diminishing Day, can be split into two categories by motif. One half is sequencer-based, with cool and angular lines paired off floating melodies and glistening processed guitar; the other is made from long stretches of droning sound that border dangerously on stagnation at times. Clearly, I find the more melodic pieces to be the stronger tracks here. These are the first three tracks, and they’re quite good. “Somehow Different (Part I)” is a perfect mix of those diaphanous guitar chords, trilling sequencer runs and hushed backdrop electronics. It’s a calm, fluid track that eases you in and has a lot to show you. Rose boldly hammers in with piano at the outset of “Infinite Regress,” laying out and layering melodic segments that he then stretches out across time, letting them all fade downward. Here, the sequencer runs play perfectly off the drifty pads and flute-like songs. This is a beautifully pulled-together piece. “Those Who Remain” benefits from its geometric nature; Rose slowly peels sad notes off this block of sound and lets them float away. The base stays simple and perfectly repetitive, letting the listener focus on the feeling of the song that’s developing. Again Rose plays with time here, increasing the interval of the melody as the piece goes along. So while the essence of the thing remains the same, it possesses a sort of decaying dynamic. From here, however, The Diminishing Day begins to diminish for me. The title track takes almost three minutes to show any sort of shift, and overall feels like it’s too dependent on it own somewhat forced drama. Several minutes into “Guitar Abstraction #4,” I got restless; I wanted it to do something. And it wasn’t. The thematic gurgling sound behind “Tidal Pool” seemed to overstay its welcome; it could have been subtler. These last three pieces feel almost like Rose gave them more time than they needed, like the ideas were all there but they were pulled too far to sustain themselves. That being said, I could gladly listen to the first have of the disc over and over. (And I have.) Rose is a rapidly developing talent with a lot to say, and ambient fans should keep an eye on him. The Diminishing Day is definitely worth an exploratory listen.
M. Peck showcases his knack for live sound sculpture and flow creation on his latest release, Bodies to the Sky. Taken from a live set Peck played on stillstream.com in early 2010, the appeal here is in the sense of constant motion and development, of listening to Peck chart his course and then keep it deeply intriguing. Bodies… moves through a good number of spaces in its relatively short 49 minutes, and Peck keeps things largely in abstract territory. There are beats sprinkled here and there, and there’s also an ample supply of darkness. The trick, and Peck’s display of strength, is in the impeccable balance. The opener, “Experiments with Infinity,” grinds up from a dark drone to a point where Peck eases in a bit of an uptempo kick. It’s a smooth transition with a lyrical flavor. From here, Peck heads downward with the mechanical clatter and dense electronics of “Floating Out to See.” This space is purely abstract, a knot of sound that unwinds itself into a quieter place and does so with a logical sense of motion. Peck hits his dark ambient stride with “Den of Inequity,” building on blasts of sound that are thick and aggressive. This is perhaps the most challenging stretch of Bodies; the sound seems like it’s daring you to stay with it. “Operative of Relative Obscurity” opens up and lightens up and gives Peck the opportunity to show his true ambient chops. There’s a sense of suspense to it, with distorted vocal samples filling the space. “Let There Be Dark” starts off with the familiar feel of analog sequencing and oscillating tones, then strips down to deposit the listener in a desolate landscape of sound. A shift in tone later hangs on big, gorgeous pipe organ chords that come like a sense of revelation as the piece draws to a close.
Although the writeup at Hypnos for the re-release of this 2003 effort refers to the collection of artists here as an “ambient supergroup,” The Path of White Clouds is more accurately a release from Oophoi and Friends. Mind you, he’s got some impressive friends gathered here: Tau Ceti, Mattias Grassow, Klaus Weise, Luna, Lorenzo Pierobon and Mauro Malgrande. But they never all appear together. Instead, Oophoi heads up a variety of duos, trios and more that coalesce into a drifting, meditative disc of layered electronics and organics. Flutes, voices and temple bowls are among the organic instruments, and I must admit that the ringing of the bowls in the first track, “The Quest” (with Tau Ceti), almost put me off the disc. The sound borders on a feedback whine at times, and I thought the disc would be taking off into an abstract noise territory. All worries faded with the next track, “Ascension,” where Oophoi’s wide synth washes bolster harmonic chanting from Pierobon. This is a big, droning work with bass-heavy layers bringing a feel of reverence that carries into “Devotion,” my favorite track. Here, Pierobon joins vocal forces with Luna against a soft wall set up by Oophoi, Tau Ceti and Grassow. Geert Verbeke brings in tones from Himalayan bowls–a more subtle sound than their earlier counterpart. This is a hypnotic track that makes full use of its 13 and a half minutes. The next two tracks feature Malgrande’s Japanese shakuhachi flute. In “The Living Mandala” it is processed to an unrecognizable element mixed in with synth from Oophoi and Grassow; in “Enlightenment” it appears in a more natural state, whispering its song over airy washes from Oophoi and Weise. This is the longest track on the disc, a 16-minute excursion that changes gear midway through, becoming somewhat more dynamic, bolder in tone. The title track closes the disc and features Oophoi and Pierobon back to provide vocals to the mix along with Weise, playing one of ambient music’s most overlooked sound sources, the zither. This is a very gentle drift, lyrically true to its title.
Speak of This to No One and Carnival are similar in approach, yet different in atmosphere. Speak… leans toward a dreamier quality with hints of unpleasant subconscious thoughts mistily floating around the edges. There is, like most of Frawley’s work, a very slight erotic/intimate edge in places, beginning with a voice at the outset of “The Kiss” quietly intoning, “So soft, so sweet.” Amplified moments of breath take on an edge-of-orgasm feel; it’s an interesting thing to hear that in your head and to get that image while at the same time realizing it may just be a breath or a shiver of cold. (“Mirrors” will mess with you this way.) This is where that level of discomfort comes in, as you’re asked to be perhaps closer to the moment than you should, hearing things you shouldn’t, and yet you know you’re not going anywhere. Also of note here is the simple beauty of “Avenue of the Secret Fur,” where Frawley’s piano walks a lonely path through understated backdrop sounds.
Carnival feels like the darker of the two. A whispering French voice launches you into the whether-you-like-it-or-not intimacy with “Premonition I.” You feel the shadows falling right away. The breathing exercises start right after with “Skywriting/An Extremely Tiny Box” and Frawley piles on the sound sources. Plane sounds, fireworks, more voices… The peer-inside-someone’s-head feel ramps up at this stage and there’s no going back. The feeling of being wrapped in between-world shadow grows even stronger in “Premonition II” (there are III). Perhaps one of the strongest narrative tracks on the disc, it’s just downright creepy in spots–like the voice whispering “fire fire fire.” It feels like Frawley reveals the story of Carnival here as a girl’s voice that’s been heard talking–in clipped bites, of course–about going to a fortune teller has a chance to tell us what exactly the fortune teller said.
Scintilla is a set of seventeen pieces of glitch-based EDM/IDM that, while constructed well enough, don’t go much out of their way to break the mold. Smooth and often beautiful base work gets scoured by high-speed glitch in a very workable blend that, like a lot of offerings in this genre, suffers from sameness. The question as I listened became, what can you do without relying on the glitch? I hear the potential in the way the last forty seconds or so of “Tight Around Her Throat She Slips Away” quiets down and is allowed to coast directly into the short, more ambient “Like Snowflakes on My Fingers.” The start of “Voiceless Whispers Flicker in the Shattered Mist” also makes a good start and really caught my attention as a track that had the potential to stand out. And then at the 1:20 mark it just gets smothered like so much of the rest. I found myself forwarding past songs after a short listen, looking for something that really makes itself known. My problem with Scintilla is that I can’t just sit down with it and listen. I get restless. When it comes up in a shuffle, it feels stronger. Make no mistake, there’s some gorgeous work in here, and taken in an isolated context, thinking only in terms of glitch, it’s very good. There’s a depth of emotion that’s consistent and strong and a velocity that’s often exhilarating. It just grows thin track after track. If your tastes run heavily toward this kind of music, Scintilla is a disc you need to dive into. For me, I’ll keep it around for shuffling purposes and quick doses of musical adrenaline.
Regrettably, Loren Nerell and A Produce’s magnificent collaboration Intangible is, barring existing unreleased material, the last offering from A Produce (aka Barry Craig). Craig unfortunately passed away in September, not long after this disc was released. Aside from Craig’s too-soon departure at 59, the other genuinely sad aspect of this is that Intangible marked the return of an absolute powerhouse talent in the ambient world and what, from the first listen, promised to be an amazing pairing of veteran ambient talents. Craig, who had been a solid presence in the ambient genre the 80s and early 90s (going as far back as cassette releases) had been away from producing music for a number of years. More tragic, then, that his brief return is marked by what is most surely going to be recognized across the board as one of the best releases of 2011. This is not sentimentality; from its first note, Intangible sets off on a complete, compelling arc of music that courses smoothly from rhythmic ambient to world-beat hybrids to dark reflections and out again. From the pleasingly catchy bounce of the title track, the duo slide into the comparative density of “Planet Atmo”–and this track has plenty of atmo. Mechnical and dark, with an air of absolute suspense. Nerell’s background in gamelan and Balinese music leaps to the foreground for the next two tracks as the rhythms storm back in. This is a pure groove beginning with “String Theory.” Over sharp percussion, Nerell’s chimes ring out with crystalline clarity. Flutes, or their digital counterparts, dance across this platform of sound. Synth winds rise like dust storms. A truly captivating piece that gets the pulse charging. “Area 51.1” (great title!) slows the pace, but keeps the exotic feel with a twangy bass line over sensual sound-washes. This one gets in and drills deep. You’ll feel it the whole way. Craig and Nerell touch perfectly on dark ambient with the isolated rasps of “Lost in Transformation.” There’s a sensible, organic bridge between “Area 51.1” and this piece; the transition is as smooth as it gets. The beats are left behind. Garbled voices rise from muddy drones and clanging gongs and chimes. Unsettling by design, this is a 10-minute immersion in borderline unpleasantry. And it works. They recover–or help you recover, anyway–with two final perfect ambient pieces. “Meadow Dust” shimmers from the outset. Cool pads take flight on easy hand percussion. You’ve made it out of the last track, and it’s going to be okay. This is a spirit-soars kind of track, with high, softened notes giving it a voice. “Pot Covers At Dawn” closes the disc like a whispered prayer. Beats sneak in under the flow to ground the passing moments.
I first encountered Dean Hinds’ music when he was producing as Lopside. That work depending largely on doctoring together blasts of noise, static and found sound into genuinely intriguing and infectious constructs. His side project, The Post Riot Era, makes a just-about 180-degree turn from Lopside with minimal processed guitar washes and a very light hand on the electronics. On Zero Sum Living clocks in under half an hour and is built on a distinct deliberateness of sound and a sense of quite unhurried contemplation. Hinds grinds out a chord then hangs it there, allowing time to let the feel of the thing saturate the space. Mostly, that feel leans toward a melancholy that stops just short of morose, a little post-modern ennui that neither overstates nor overstays. The character of the thing comes through in Hinds’ sustain and the pauses between statements from the guitar, a kind of veiled heaviness of spirit, a well-timed set of reserved sighs. In the background, white noise washes hiss a counterpoint, often pulsing like distant, unceasing machinery. The sound on Zero Sum is thick; it is, in part, a drone-based work, but the drones birth out of bursting chords one at a time and make you wait for the next. Activity followed by inactivity. It’s captivating, and On Zero Sum Living readily melts into an endless loop that never loses its sad luster.
Hypnagogue Music Reviews 