Mirror - Still Valley

This album is mindblowing. It is, and always will be, one of my favorite ambient albums of all time. And it is also, in my opinion, one of the most flatout scariest records I know. The first time I heard this one at a record store I said to myself "heh, this sounds nice", but this album takes all its meaning when played in the dark, in the middle of the night, the spare sound of cicadas mumbling outside the opened windows.

When you listen to this one in the dark, it will reveal its true space, the sudden bursts of animal cries will send shivers through your veins and the background noises will sound like distant strange signals from another world. On this regard the title, Still Valley, but also the artwork is really appropriate here, as the entire piece just yells this description, a village lost in the middle of a green valley, where nothing moves, time is just frozen, and you are wandering around wondering why everything is so silent, why the water doesn't move down the river, why the birds are suspended in mid air, why every life seemed to have been sucked out of everything that surrounds you.

This is a perfect soundtrack for a nightmare, but not a lousy, noisy nightmare, no, more of the kind of those silent ones you make, where you are lost and nothing will save you from the void. This is not one of those ambient records you sleep at, but rather one that scares the hell out of you by being so strangely quiet.

A truly timeless, incredible piece of music, the kind you have to experience more than to actually listen to.