RUDY ADRIAN: Moonwater (CD on Lotuspike)
This release from 2006 offers 63 minutes of foggy ambience.
Tenuous textures of ethereal substance provide a swirling foundation for sedate piano passages that express solemn chords in a relaxed fashion. Sparkling, understated effects drift throughout the mix like mobile starscapes. Periodic swells cascade over the harmonics, lending brief instances of vitality, then things recede to the customary pool of tranquillity. Waves of fragile tones drift with vaporous consistency, generating a foggy overcast. Peering through this hazy firmament are layers of additional electronic mist which provide a gradual interchange of rarefied atmospheric disposition. These exchanges occur with great lassitude, defying observation and generating an easygoing transference of silvery effluvium. The chords waft like theoretical condensation, elusive and flimsy as they create a moody flow.
Buried in the mix are sounds of twinkling definition that infuse the illusion of remote celestial events. This deceptive presence gives the soundscapes a feeling of expansive reach, linking the stately moon with the placid oceans of earth.
These compositions are sparse, with only a hint of melodic content. The tunes rely more on harmonic ebbs and flows to accomplish their existence.
The last two tracks comprise two-thirds of a live performance around Christmas of 2003.
RICHARD BONE: Serene Life of Microbes (CD on AD Music)
This release from 2006 offers 56 minutes of dreamy ambience.
Delicate textural flows generate an expansive firmament. Unhurried tones and shuddering pulsations drift in this environment, establishing a sedate panorama for additional electronics to emerge like lightbeams poking through the fabric of space. This stately ambience hosts an assortment of transient tonalities who visit, display their ethereal manner, then dissipate to open the stage for the next array of tenuous sounds.
A studious harmony dominates this parade of tranquil resonance. Each track blossoms with pacific grace, exhibiting its beauty in a fashion of explicit leisure. Sparkling notes glitter in the distance, providing soothing punctuation for the heavenly atmosphere. Sighing textures waft against each other, creating a relaxed friction whose fire is endearing and balmy. Pleasant keyboards provide spectral layers that float amid the congenial soundscapes.
The compositions are quite melodic, but never strict or outgoing. They shimmer with vitality, but it is a soft glow that radiates serenity.
There's a microscopic impression to this music, as if the songs have relegated the audience to subatomic stature so that they drift alongside spiky spores of enormous size. It's a humbling feeling, in strange contrast to the somber majesty evoked by the tunes themselves.
MARCUS REUTER: Trepanation(CD on Lotuspike)
This release from 2006 offers 80 minutes of haunting ambience.
In the opening piece, languid textures are peppered with sampled chords that ring with melodic verve. These sounds vibrate like muffled chimes, generating a regal divinity that evokes the presence of heaven just past a thin veil of reality. The music seems determined to penetrate that fabric, allowing mind and spirit to fuse with glorious results, much the way trepanation is rumored to liberate consciousness to higher planes of concentration.
Subsequent tracks explore more sedate sonic terrain with wafting atmospherics and throbbing pulses. The tunes are gentle and almost tenuous, with hesitant embellishments of denser substance and environmental samples allowing the real world to coexist with these ethereal soundscapes. Liquid effects blend with dreamy tones to achieve a somnambulant bearing.
Sustained notes play an important role in these songs, generating elongated connections between moments and instances. Variances are employed to augment these stretches, imbuing a sense of wobble to the dreamy currents. Sometimes it seems as if notes are shifted sideways in mid declaration, resulting in an eerie mood of displacement.
While generally introspective, these compositions possess a certain potency that lifts them from conventional background music, imbuing the tunes with a haunting demeanor capable of leaving impressions long after the music has ceased.
BRUNO SANFILIPPO: InTRO (CD on ad21 Music)
This release from 2006 offers 54 minutes of engaging ambience.
Joining Sanfilippo on this recording is Alio Die on one track.
For the first track: softly drifting textures are augmented by dreamy strings and sedate percussives, generating a lush and pleasant dose of ambience. Environmental samples enhance this soothing tuneage, contrasting the aerial violin with placid rainfall.
The next track is ushered in by wind chimes winding their way through cyclic electronics breathing in tandem with didgeridoo. The serene tones maintain a steady flux that excellently suits an introspective reverie.
The third piece wafts in on a shuddering breeze, orchestral airs vibrating in the distance while fragile electronics lazily cavort in the foreground amid softly ponged bells.
Stately piano commands the next track, describing pensive chords in an ethereal fog of wind-borne electronics. Relaxation becomes mandatory.
Heavenly hosts rise in the next track to meet a rain-swept wash punctuated by pastoral zephyrs.
The next track employs singsong tones to achieve a contemplative milieu that is as captivating as it is dreamlike. The melody sways with tender intention, caressing the psyche with tendrils of sweet resonance.
Piano reappears for the final piece, waxing emotional and conspiring with persuasive soundscapes to achieve a sweeping return to externality.
A superb dose of ambience whose power is understated but vibrant, evoking a series of entries into the inner mind.
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