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Buyer Rating: 100.0% positive (16 ratings)

Kwook - Unidentified Feathered Object - 19-Aug-07 05:50 AM
The main problem I have with putting my finger on this album is the structure. It starts out with a reasonably strongly melodic piece, and returns to melody for phases throughout it runs. The problem is that although it’s relatively easy to get a grip on something which is completely structureless, or maintains a similar structure through, but much harder to draw in something which slips between drifting, empty drones to richer melody and back again without much distinction between the different phases. Equally, although it has sinister, science fiction sampled moments, the whole piece lacks a definitive atmosphere—most of it is easy to listen to, with mild tones and phrases.

What does it sound like overall? This is that question I always find hardest to answer, and why I try to steer clear of reviewing things in general! But… quite a soft, pleasant, easy listen, more droney than not, interspersed with a few darker moments. The kind of album where you put it on, listen to the first ten minutes, and then don’t really notice until it’s over.

My recommendation -- again, I’d like to stress that the above isn’t meant as a criticism of the album, but I don’t feel as if I can recommend it strongly. Certainly one that I’m quite happy to have in my collection though!

Andrew Deutsch - The Sun - 04-Aug-07 02:28 PM
How to describe the album… ? It’s pure sound, waves of texture, beatless, pulsing, strongly, surgingly rhythmic, a slow space, each track very similar yet so different. I played it down the phone to a friend of mine, and she said it sounded like an orchestra tuning up… a description that’s stuck with me, in terms of the tones and timbres of the sound.

I didn’t read the inlay card for a few days after I’d bought it, but when I had, an entire new area of appreciation opened up. The piece is made entirely from treated field recordings of the ocean—those waves of sound really are waves, surging back and forth on the beach in front of you. The recording seems suddenly to imbued with a whole new level of coarseness, detail and subtlety. It sounds natural, in other words…

Tom Heasley - Desert Triptych - 20-Jul-07 08:58 AM
Two first impressions when the disc arrived through my door -- amazing artwork, which I found later so well compliments the mood of the piece, and slight apprehension at the mention of the word didjeridu. Not because I have anything against the instrument itself, just against how hackneyed it’s become in many respects.

Were my apprehensions well founded? Definitely not. From the outset... a constant, drifting drone, balancing delicately between organic and electronic, ethereal and unsettling. And yes, the didj is in there, both subtle and obvious, part of the long, haunting, continuous drone. The whole thing is so evocative, not just of the desert to which it refers, but to all the associations that go along with it... for me, that bring's touches of David Lynch, dilapidated diners and Near Dark.

A excellent, evocative soundscape, not to be missed.

Robert Davies - Sub Rosa - 08-Jun-07 01:45 AM
This is a disc that’s hard to qualify, hard to get a grip on. It’s first mark is its incredibly warm, yet slightly melancholy intro track, Cloud Shadows. We’re in completely beatless territory here, and there we remain for the rest of the running time. I would hesitate to call this drone music though... although it touches its toe into drones throughout, it tends to loose the soft, warm floating feeling of the first track as we move into the piece. It’s more about shorter form, slightly more structured work… each track is more like an experiment with a motif, rather than a fuller exploration of it. It seems as if everything slips away before you can grasp it...

... which may, of course, be exactly what you’re looking for. A great work for quiet listening, as in letting it float past. With the exception of the first track (in my opinion), not such an easy one for focused listening.

For those that it’ll suit, thoroughly recommended.

A Small, Good Thing - Slim Westerns - 14-Nov-04 11:01 PM
The very best in heat-haze ambience... sliding, shimmering, not a little tonuge in cheek, and not a little atmospheric either.

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