March 18, 2013 • Cold Tear Records
Like Sending Echoes, Hidden Way Between Some Rains was another pickup from the dub techno section of Bandcamp. While this album veers way more into the ambient side of techno rather than dub, its aesthetics and presentation still make for a pretty good album.
In fact this album and Sending Echoes share quite a few similarities in sound—beats that are solid but not too heavy, warm background synths, glitchy accents, and an echoing, ethereal atmosphere. Each song has a handful of airy melodies to carry it along, and the rhythms—while simple—can easily drive the music forward in an engaging (and even catchy) way; see "Bubbles" for a good example.
But where Hidden Way shines is its larger sonic diversity than similar techno albums. It also has its share of nice relaxing ambient-oriented tracks like "Kristaliniai Sapnai" and "Pingvinai Vakar" to break up the album a bit; this (to me) is a nice advantage over albums like Sending Echoes, which had a problem with album flow and pacing. Hidden Way avoids this, for the most part. Also standing out is the more organic-sounding, uplifting track "Forest Walk", reminding me of other "acoustic-electronic" artists like Bridges Buildings combined with Floex.
It's not the be-all and end-all for ambient techno based on what I've heard so far, but it is definitely enjoyable while it's on and I am always pleased to give this album a spin. While the Cold Tear giveaway is over and these albums aren't free anymore, they're definitely worth checking out—especially this one—for those less initiated to "normal" techno, like me.
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