BT ‎– _

The three main tracks, Artifacture, Indivisim and Ohm are undoubtedly BT's finest music for many years. Complex, interesting and evolving in natural but surprising ways, they stand up well alongside his magnum opus This Binary Universe. When compared to his last artist album, in my opinion the frankly terrible A Song Across Wires, or his recent generic and repetitive output on the Armind label, these three pieces are in another galaxy.

However, in regards to the complete album, I do feel that BT did let us down after promising two and a half hours of new music in the build up to it's release. The total time is unfortunately only around one and a half hours and yet it easily could have been longer. The first four songs, while pleasant enough, are all far too short to allow any sort of interesting development like the three main pieces. As stand alone songs they are like nice film score cues but when preceding three such incredible works they come across as snatches of ideas that were never fulfilled. While an extra hour may have been stretching it, BT could easily have given us four more Artifacture's rather than four far less interesting or enjoyable songs that pale into insignificance when placed in the company that they keep.

The final two pieces are both longer but neither can live up to the preceding three. Chromatophore is a far more ambient soundscape which doesn't have the variety or multi-layered dimension that it really needs. It bubbles along but never really goes anywhere. As a final track it might have worked but unfortunately that place is taken by Five Hundred And Eighty Two. This is where I cannot understand BT's thought process because this piece could, and should, have only been a few minutes long. It is monotonous and relies on one simple, and not overly pleasant, deep throbbing sound stretched out over thirteen minutes. Why couldn't Lustral, for example, have been developed over that length of time instead? It has far more melody and beauty but is cut short before it can get started.

In conclusion, this album contains some of BT's best ever music but it could have been even better. Whereas BT's earlier masterpiece This Binary Universe was a complete and balanced album, this is like one album placed within a set of ideas. If The Stars Are Eternal was similar in a way, four fantastic songs with three film score offcuts in between.