Robert Rich – Illumination

May 2007 • Soundscape Productions

I make it no secret that I'm a sucker for dark ambient. Supposedly, Robert Rich is some sort of "master of the form"; Illumination is the first thing by him I've ever heard and I admit it's not too bad, although it's definitely not anything brilliant.

Granted, the atmosphere is great; it's a pretty creepy album with lots of droning, what sounds like stretched-out scare chords, washes of rumbling noise, and some subtle whispering. It could probably be used effectively as a soundtrack for a psychological horror film or something like that. It's very effective and definitely well-done.

However the album does have some problems, and I'm still not terribly impressed by it. It gets repetitive and samey over the long run, especially the longer tracks. I suppose that is to be expected on this sort of release, but there's almost no way to tell the tracks apart, which is something I know can be avoided in ambient music. Consequently it's easy to get bored listening to it as the repeating sounds tend to get less unique and interesting the longer one listens.

There really isn't much else to say about the album; like I said it's definitely not bad but it doesn't break any new ground as far as dark ambient goes (and it's a bit silly to have an album like this coming out in 2007). It's still decent, it makes great mood music (like a good ambient album ought to), but I'd say it's probably best for beginner audiences as any fan of dark ambient has certainly heard plenty of albums like this that are much better.

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