2007 • Practising Nature
There are some albums that are just difficult to discuss. I find this happening a lot lately with the ambient and drone albums I've been reviewing; like them, Insights is presenting me with a challenge. The lack of substance present in such albums is probably the cause. This one is simply five monolithic tracks of lush, droning ambience. It's not a bad release, yet I am struggling to find genuine enjoyment from it.
Like Eno's Ambient albums, no attempt at any sort of structure or distinctive sounds is used, and there is little rhythm to be had. Rather, each track is set up by several looping (or droning) voices to create a relatively simple, yet thick and sometimes psychedelic, sound. There are lots of layered synths, a technique which in ambient music I find to be a bit overdone; although it's used pretty effectively here it's nothing mindblowing or mesmerizing. Each track is pretty much the same as the others: lots of droning with simple synth voices, perhaps punctuated by some very subtle rhythms or melodies buried deep in the sound.
It does make good background music, though; it's not intrusive, surprising, or unpleasant. The tracks do slowly evolve over their long runtimes, although this is nearly impossible to notice without skipping around. Unfortunately, it's also relatively dull, and listening to it with the amount of attention I'm giving it now is very difficult (a bit of a trend I've been noticing with the ambient albums I've been reviewing lately, e.g. Illumination). This is especially egregious on "Whole Pulse" which is the longest track yet contains just a simple droning sound that practically doesn't ever change over nearly twenty minutes.
As there is so much ambient music out there that I've been listening to lately I can't really recommend this album. Although it is quite good at what it does, it's not terribly compelling or interesting enough to warrant more than a passing listen, and there is simply loads more music like this (yet better) that I'd rather hear. Regardless, it isn't bad, and it would probably be a good idea to check out some more of Mathias Grassow's huge back catalog; I think he has a lot of potential and there is probably something great buried in there.
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