September 10, 2012 • self-released
It's a sad fact that some artists simply never will get the recognition they deserve (I suppose that's something I'm trying to alleviate with these reviews). The music world is full of amazing stuff most people will simply never hear. Costa Rican artist Eus is definitely up there with the hidden gems, at least in my book: perfectly-crafted, atmospheric, cinematic, and droning ambient, some of the best I've heard.
Interestingly, for an ambient album, Los otros is about as complex as you can get, as it's chock full of loads of different sounds and textures: crackling noise, loads of droning, ethereal synthesizers, unique sampling... everything that makes up a good ambient album (at least, the sort of stuff I've been digging recently). It doesn't skimp on the atmospheric side, either. Some tracks are soothing and melancholy, while others are foreboding and creepy with dark echoing sounds and dissonant strings. Impressively, the album's composition is set up in such a way that the emotional ride is never jarring, and everything is eased into nicely when it should be (heck, just compare the beginning of "Luz" to its end).
In fact, most tracks have some subtle rhythms and melodies buried far underneath the layers of sound that take their time merging their way into the composition—it's really quite neat how tracks like "La primera piedra" evolve slowly from a seemingly simple drone into a beautiful, slow bass melody and the drones that were already there click into place alongside that melody. It's really neat to hear it all come together like that.
Needless to repeat, I love what Eus is doing on this album, and it's a fantastic example of how to do complex ambient and cinematic music right. There's just something about it that really appeals to me on a personal level, my tastes for that sort of sad beauty you get in tracks like "Diluria".
And it's free, so, you know, there's that.
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