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Archive for June, 2012

Encomiast – Gravity Is Very Compelling

Posted in Reviews, tagged on June 4, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I have to confess that I hadn’t heard of Encomiast before. The collective’s membership varies; they have released over a dozen albums, and have also been involved in film music and occasional live performances. “Gravity Is Very Compelling” was created out of incidental music and sounds created for a production of Sarah Ruhl’s play “Eurydice“. It’s a single piece of music, just over half-an-hour long, which the artist states “attempts to roughly parallel the play’s 3-movement plot structure, moving from our world, to the underworld, and finally to the tragic meeting of [Orpheus and Eurydice]”.

Our story begins with gently lapping waves, which are joined by a subtle chord progression of pads that open the track out into an almost angelic beginning. The pads thicken and swell, and a muted choir adds to the density, creating giant slabs of sustained, languorous beauty. The pads and voices move in and out of step, and the pattern repeats itself slowly, building and ever-shifting in an expectation of what’s to come.

We progress to a change: a shift from our world to the underworld. Discordant, distressed voices begin to appear above the shimmering sound of the pads and choir. Minor chords begin to appear mirrored with what sounds like filtered white noise. Rain, perhaps. A distant thunderclap, and rumbling. The constant noise is louder, drowning out the opening sequence. Occasional quiet clicks accompanied by static echo across the soundfield, like valves opening and closing; almost intakes of breath. Around the halfway mark, everything moves off-kilter, as though we’re physically sliding downwards. Long, dark ambient chords transfix us in a fearful place.

Some resistance is met again by the influx of the brighter voices from the first part. A whirling sound speeds up and slows down again, and the darkness has almost gone. The listener is placed in a vantage point to prepare to witness the couple’s tragic end. A bell strikes, while distant string plucks begin behind the sound of water droplets. The sounds start a slow fade, punctuated by a chime and bowls. We’re in a desolate space. There is no music, only sound. Very slowly, luscious chords are introduced. The waves are lapping again, as we fade towards the play’s conclusion.

Gravity is, indeed, very compelling, as is Encomiast’s elegant, descriptive soundtrack.

Label: Vuzh Music   Cat: VUZH035   Artist: Encomiast   Price: Free

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Andrew Lahiff – Quiet Correlations

Posted in Reviews, tagged , on June 1, 2012| 1 Comment »

Andrew Lahiff, a composer of ambient, space and electronic music, started to make his music available via the web in 2002. This is his nineteenth release, and his first to be issued on the Pocket Fields netlabel.

Andrew opens the album with “An Image of the Earth”, which glides in and pins the listener into a space between bass and high treble.  Liquid notes flow across the room, burbling and gurgling gorgeously as the track opens out. Little high notes dance elegantly above huge organic pads, evoking the beauty of the earth’s globe balanced perfectly in space. Next, “Oak, Snow and Ice” finds us in winter, but with a warm glow from the sun, even in this cold. The use of the stereo soundfield here is vibrant and engaging. Gentle metallic coils suspend themselves above reverb-laden pads, which become notes, which become pads again.

Track three, “The Dream Lives Forever”, is the album’s longest, running to eleven minutes. It’s very enigmatic. Moving slowly, and almost with hesitation, it shifts across long spans of scintillating synth chords in a soft ambient swathe. This is truly ethereal and sublime music. In “Alpine Glaciers”, gentle drips of melting iceflows tap away at the surface below, as we observe the endless conversion of ice to water. Cold, yet with an ever-beating heart of warmth inside.

“Stones and Ornaments” places us among both forgotten and remembered objects. A sense of nostalgia is ever present, but it’s almost as though we’re not sure what it is that we’re trying to remember. Stones and ornaments can be one and the same, but there is internal conflict in the music about which of those we see. In “Cliffs at the Edge of Time”, there’s a sense of unease and foreboding. This piece isn’t dark, but it seems to be full of questions about the future. Crackles ripple off to the left and right, and the structured centre tries to halt that fragmentation with a long, shifting pad which appears and recedes again, and is gone.

The final third of “Quiet Correlations” starts with “New Beginnings”, a tender piece which has just the right amount of yearning for the birth of something new. Never cloying, never over-seasoned, it’s life-affirming in a subtle, positive way. Something new is definitely upon us. “Luminous Approaches” begins as the edgiest piece on the album, heralding imminent changes which bring with them a degree of internal conflict. The instrumentation here is wonderful; everything is in exactly the right place. The highest notes of the music hang over us like a thin, gently moving canopy.

The penultimate track “Follow the Mountains” is somewhat mysterious. Long ambient pads stretch out, as far as we can know. The planet turns slowly, and distant creatures cry out in the night. There’s a sense of everything moving back into the right place – into correct, new-yet-familiar spaces. It’s disquieting, but not foreboding. The track closes with a repetitive synth trill which fades into silence.

For “Night on the Plateau”, we are left feeling chilly and bereft of shelter. Cold pads draw out in long voices. The noises of the unsettled night creatures continue; periodically, a bell rings as if to draw them ever closer. The album draws to a close with a seemingly unanswered question.

Andrew recently joined the roster of the wonderful Relaxed Machinery label, and his first release there is highly anticipated, both by the label and by this reviewer.

Label: Pocket Fields   Cat: PF027   Artist: Andrew Lahiff   Price: Free

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Van Aken Project – O/Aase EP

Posted in Reviews, tagged , , on June 1, 2012| 2 Comments »

Fresh from Webbed Hand Records is a new EP from the mysterious Van Aken Project. I can’t find anything by way of background information about the artist, who describes the release as “a deep and dark journey in the dreadful corners of the soul”. Upfront, there’s an expectation that the listener may be in for something bleak.

“Crawling Rapture” kicks off with a clambering bassline which pulls the listener into a slow, loping trip hop rhythm, fuelled by spooky organ stabs, and with scattered snatches of what sounds like a police radio scanner. It’s very short, but it’s an excellent opener. Dark, but not in a dark ambient sense.

“Kira”, the centrepiece of the album at over fifteen minutes long, starts with a distant, pummelling beat and ethereal voices, and quickly takes us into a series of single piano notes, before moving into a beatless void of dark ambience. A ticking sound, like a warped clock, moves in and across the soundfield. A slow, almost funereal organ plays a sequence of notes while the ambience shivers around us. A mid-range metallic thud begins underneath a repetitive wind instrument. Clarinet, perhaps? A dark pad brings in a descending motif, and an angelic choir fades in and overlays the top of the music as the pad makes way for gentle piano. Discordant strings push the piano aside, before it returns with more urgency. The track fades out with ghostly, distressed voices. It’s quite a journey.

Mid-way through the album in terms of tracks, “Room22” has a much more industrial feel, with a clanking machine-like beat. Odd snatches of spoken word and singing appear; a different room in the same building. The penultimate cut, “Outside”, is set in a big, dubby space, with harp and far away birdsong. A minor series of synth chords pulls us forward relentlessly. Strings and trumpet move in as the dub beat leaves. It feels as though we’ve been placed right inside a story where we don’t understand the rules. Lovely stuff.

The EP finishes with the oppressive “Entombed Colony”. A relentless buzz of alien insects draws the listener into a dark, factory-like hive. A solid, complex rhythm propels the music forward; the rhythm gives way to quiet, delayed synth stabs, which float the track towards the final closing of the hive-tomb’s heavy entrance.

Label: Webbed Hand   Cat: WH230   Artist: Van Aken Project   Price: Free

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