Alan Lamb ‎– Primal Image

When I was a kid, I read an interview in which Ben Burtt mentioned using struck steel cables, like the kind that keep utility poles from falling over, as the source of some of the blaster sounds in Star Wars. Naturally, I immediately went out to the nearest one I could find and duplicated the sound, much to my amusement. It didn't occur to me to put my ear right on the cable, and I didn't have access to the miles-long overhead lines, but if I had, now I know what it would've sounded like: this album.

Cold, metallic, droning resonances build and fade away with immense cascading reverberations as the wind blows across the lines, and different kinds of "blaster" sounds are heard as birds land and depart. The title track is more dissonant and menacing, while "Beauty" is more tonal and dreamlike. Both tracks have a naturalness to them, in their randomness, even though the timbres are very obviously not from nature.

This is one of very few ambient albums that I can't stand to have interrupted. I don't have to hear it all the way through, but if I listen to more than a few seconds, I end up just letting it play.