Cestine – Rugosa

April 24, 2015 • Hacktivism Records

Another followup EP this week: Cestine's Rugosa, a fantastic sequel to Other Half / Bright Encounter.

It's more of the same droning ambient, but again Cestine does it in a very effective way that few similar artists can do. While the music is relatively simple, it's produced in a way that is both engaging and relaxing. It has a hazy, fuzzy aesthetic created by huge, monolithic slabs of synth waves (or whatever they're using—it's always so hard to tell) and reverberation, layered up and sent cascading down. Although it's a bit slow-burning and takes its time getting the listener absorbed into it, if you have the patience for this sort of stuff it absolutely pays off—especially the EP's ending: a bittersweet string and wind ensemble over choppy bass rumbles and a bit of field recordings. A beautiful way to wrap up.

My only disappointment with it is that the tracks are far too short; three to five minutes is nowhere near long enough for this style of music, and that's something Other Half / Bright Encounter didn't have a problem with. On Rugosa the first three tracks seem like they're over before they've even started, and spooling them out to ten minutes or longer would have been simple. I could be very happy with these same four tracks in a longer album format.

Still, as they're presented they are wonderful to listen to and I'm glad I got this EP. Cestine (as a group) has sadly ended but hopefully the members' solo work can stay on the same level (I just have to remember to keep up with it!).

Cestine – Other Half / Bright Encounter

August 13, 2014 • Rok Lok Records

Cestine is another minimalist ambient drone project—but I don't want to sound dismissive because this kind of music is something I can really never get enough of—especially when it's as beautiful and relaxing as Other Half / Bright Encounter is. Simple washes of looping synths and distant glitches off in the background remind me a bit of Basinski's tape works (without the orchestration). There's also some voice sampling and I think some field recordings mixed in to keep things interesting.

Like most drone, it's very slow-burning music (understandable for two big fifteen-minute tracks), but I don't think it ever really goes on longer than it should and the pacing is pretty good. "Bright Encounter" has an especially good structure, with a great fade-in and transition from somber piano to some kind of synthetic-beach aesthetic, back to atmospheric droning.

Maybe I'm just a sucker for this genre but I can't recommend Cestine enough. Well-produced zone-out ambient, that's all there is to it.

Scott Walker & Sunn O))) – Soused

October 20, 2014 • 4AD Records

You know I can't resist Sunn O))) collaborations. I can resist them even less the more bizarre the other artist is—and of course it's harder to get more weird than Scott Walker, he of The Drift, one of the most messed-up albums I've ever heard. But sometimes that's not always a good thing and, even though my hopes have been high for these collaborations (especially since I liked Terrestrials considerably), I can't get behind Soused at all.

As for the music: to be honest, it's basically what I expected. Sunn O))) drones away on their guitars o' doom, while Walker belts out some impressive singing over top (yeah, he's 71, and sounds way better than most people half his age). Meanwhile, creepy noises and synths and samples bubble and stomp around. "Bull" and "Fetish" shake things up with a bit of rhythmic almost-rock and there are a few industrial-style loops here and there, but for the most part they stick to the formula closely.

And that's about all that happens for forty-eight minutes. I'm not really sure what to make of it. I feel like I usually get what is going on with Sunn O))), and Walker's stuff I've heard before isn't particularly obtuse, but this feels like there's really something missing. I can tell they have good intentions but there just isn't enough happening to justify five whole tracks of this. Come on, Sunn O))), I know you're capable of doing better.

Sunn O))) & Nurse with Wound – The Iron Soul of Nothing

November 29, 2011 • Ideologic Organ

I've had this album kicking around since it came out in late 2011 and have only now remembered it exists. Any collaboration Sunn O))) does always seems to work out majestically (or close enough), and Nurse with Wound is probably one of the best candidates for such a collaboration. Unfortunately I won't say that it turned out quite as good as I hoped, but even so this is still a somewhat interesting album and at the very least one for the die-hard fans.

"Ash on the Trees" sounds basically like what you'd expect—we have Nurse with Wound's pants-wettingly-frightening noisescapes and Sunn O)))'s meandering doomy guitar, all wrapped up in an oppressively dark occult atmosphere. I've always though that Sunn O))) can get a little boring when it's just their plain guitar doom and having some extra elements to spice things up really helps (see Monoliths & Dimensions for one), and Nurse with Wound's particular brand of noise goes very well with the sort of aesthetic Sunn O))) is always trying to have. That track has a very aggressive aspect to the noise and how it drives the guitar lines and vocals forward. (Speaking of vocals, though, that's always something that could have been handled better. There are very few times when a Sunn O))) release has vocals in it that work well, but this isn't really one of them. When they aren't repetitive, they sound silly instead.)

As for the remaining three tracks, it feels like things kind of fell off the rails. The album just becomes slightly-noisy droning without a whole lot of substance to it. While it's no surprise that all the tracks are quite long, I don't think there's really enough going on in most of them to justify the fourteen-to-eighteen minute runtimes. I get the need for buildups and long blocks of sound, but there's a point where things get too long. And yes, that applies even when the buildups are good (as they are here)! Like I love the ambient drone of "Dysnystaxis" with its dissonant chimes and lonely violin, but after a while I get impatient. It doesn't go anywhere or do anything. Both "Ra at Dawn" tracks are even worse in this regard. They are actually both really interesting tracks and have a lot of different things going on that develop in a cool way, but because they're so long and drawn-out it's hard to even notice any of it. Take the same tracks and scrunch them down to half the length and it'd be amazing because you'd get to appreciate the ebb and flow of the drones... but that just doesn't happen.

On the whole, this isn't the best way to experience either band. I don't think anybody is completely on top of their game on this album; they've both released material that are far better than Iron Soul. But I think this album was still worth a listen, at least as long as you know what you're getting into. There's still plenty on here to enjoy; you just have to be patient and look around for it. It's too bad they couldn't do more of the ritual-occult stuff of the first track. Maybe some other time.

Sunn O))) & Ulver – Terrestrials

February 4, 2014 • Southern Lord Records

Sunn O))) and Ulver. One of my long-time dream collaborations. Technically they've recorded together before, for a bonus track on White1, but that hardly counts. So I've been looking forward to this album eagerly ever since I heard about it—after all, Sunn O)))'s recent material has been pretty spectacular, and Ulver's latest was amazing as well. It's not really that surprising that this collaboration turned out pretty good. Not fantastic, but pretty good.

What we get on Terrestrials is some kind of sprawling ambient drone, that somehow seems to perfectly encapsulate both band's styles and go well beyond what they normally do. "Let There Be Light" feels like an extension of Monoliths & Dimensions's "Alice": huge guitar drones, a triumphant brass section, and some skittery but cohesive drumming that glues them together. "Western Horn" is a bit more traditional Sunn O))), with guitar drones and some weird buzzing noisy bits (wait—maybe that's violin? I can't tell); a very weird track. "Eternal Return" has a bit of Garm's vocals on it, which is really cool to hear, as they go well with the more soothing and melodic tone of the track. Great strings and xylophone (or whatever it is... I really should be able to tell) on this one; definitely more of an Ulver vibe towards the end.

Unfortunately, it still falls a bit flat of my lofty expectations. It's a bit short at just 36 minutes (this is Sunn O))) we're talking about here, "drone" and "short" don't mix) and the tracks don't really feel like they really get anywhere. Granted, as I mentioned, the instrumentation and aesthetics are both well-done, but drone can be a bit more interesting and engaging than this.

Though that might have to do with the fact that this album was apparently recorded in a single improvisation session. Usually I hate it when bands do that, but I guess there is an exception for drone and ambient because it usually winds up at least half-decent anyway. You can't really tell that it's improvised. I'll still take the composed stuff first, thanks.

Sure, it's not quite as expansive and enveloping as either Monoliths & Dimensions or Messe I.X–VI.X, but I definitely still enjoy this album quite a bit. It's a collaboration that certainly works and has a lot of promise, and I'd very much like to hear them tackle something with a bit more purpose and effort. Even so, this is definitely not one to be missed by fans of either band.

Tim Hecker – Virgins

October 14, 2013 • Kranky

Though many people claim Harmony in Ultraviolet as a high point for ambient music, I was never really a huge fan of its sound. But then, a couple years ago, when I first heard Hecker's 2011 album Ravedeath, 1972, it had an incredible effect on me which turned my opinion of Hecker around completely. I still consider it to be one of the greatest ambient albums I've ever heard. Virgins is more or less a direct sequel to Ravedeath, and it is equally as intense and beautiful and necessary to hear.

For the uninitiated, Virgins' style can be a bit hard to describe—it's an enveloping combination of layered ambient droning, glitchy electronics, tape manipulation, and some classical instrumentation like woodwinds and strings. Though each track is distinct from the rest, the album still manages to flow together in one huge soundscape—it's more of an experience than a collection of songs.

And I've heard a good handful of albums like this one (with wildly varying opinions on each), but there's something about Hecker's approach to this kind of music that leaves me stunned whenever I listen to it. Like Ravedeath, there's this sort of overbearing, plodding, beautiful sadness to the music that grabs my attention at every turn. Though the tone is mostly pretty sad, there are other times when things get incredibly tense—even a bit angry—as conflict between the soothing ambience and harsh, assonant grinding noises and drones erupts out of nowhere. Despite being an album constructed the way it is, it still feels very real and present. There's just so much happening, even during the quieter parts; but it never seems like it's too much to take in, even when the music is undoubtedly suffocating the listener. Sometimes the music sounds messy and disorganized, sometimes it's clean and concise, but it's still consistent with itself.

Also like Ravedeath, I won't say Virgins is a flawless album; there are still some slightly weaker tracks and the album is a little duller around the middle. But considering how much the album wows me on the whole, I don't really care; I just want to feel in that moment—where soft clarinets and echoing sawtooth synths and clanging noises surround me and all I can think is "why bother listening to anything else?".

9

Stream the album courtesy of NPR

Locrian – Return to Annihilation

June 25, 2013 • Relapse Records

Locrian is another one of those bands I'd known the name of for years but never got around to listening to them until recently. And to be honest, it turns out I wasn't really missing all that much.

Return to Annihilation is some sort of odd combination of orthodox black metal aesthetics with a drone- and post-rock-like approach. It's a very unique sound, and one that I think probably has a lot of potential, but Return to Annihilation seems a bit half-baked to me. Locrian doesn't seem to know exactly what they want to play, so they do all sorts of different things and throw them together. Sometimes it winds up working, sometimes it doesn't.

The tracks are mostly based around repitition and very subtle variance, but that leaves a lot of them feeling a bit empty and directionless—see "A Visitation...", which finally kicks off with just one minute left and promptly goes nowhere. Not all of them are like that; the title track has an interesting buildup although the way it's handled is a bit weird. "Panorama of Mirrors" probably does its structure the best, but it's so slow that it's tough to notice anything happening.

The jury's still out on the muffled, tortured screaming vocals which only slightly fit the album's aesthetics—they fit in okay with the heavier sections, of course, but against the lighter clean guitars and ambience they simply sound wrong.

It's not all bad, though; there are still some high moments. "Two Moons"' contrast of the machine drone with the steady drums and lilting guitar is actually pretty cool. The lengthy closer "Obsolete Elegies" is actually a really solid track, too, with a good atmosphere and solid finish to the album.

I guess for ambient/noise fans, this is a decent enough album, but I don't think it's really put together well enough or captivating enough to warrant more than one or two listens. I'm not writing off Locrian just yet, though; apparently The Crystal World is quite good...

5

Fuck Buttons – Slow Focus

July 22, 2013 • ATP Recordings

Fuck Buttons was a real cool band back in 2008, for sure. One of the first "good" live shows I saw, and Street Horrrsing was a noise/electronica classic in my book. I've kept up with the band only casually since then, but it's good to know that they're still putting out some quality stuff. Slow Focus is definitively their least-good so far, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth listening to.

Not much has changed for the duo since 2009 and here we have basically the same sound that we had on Tarot Sport, coupling together driving tribal rhythms and percussion with warm and atmospheric sawtooth synth layers (with some cool sound effects too, in a way that Black Dice might do if Black Dice were still good). It's a bit less intense and aggressive; the tracks don't really have the same wall-of-sound thing going on, but the dynamics we get instead are mostly well-done and work great on keeping the tracks interesting and moving forward. And every now and again it does include those brain-pounding moments, like "Stalker"'s heavy ending minutes.

It has a few minor issues that are holding it back, though. A couple of the some of the melodies and "hooks" are a bit silly, like "The Red Wing", which make it hard to take the album seriously and take away from its overall quality. There are still no vocals, disappointingly; the harsh distorted screaming was one of the more interesting elements of their older material and it looks like it's gone for good.

And like all Fuck Buttons, Slow Focus relies a lot on repetition; I can see this being a downside for some people and yeah, maybe the album isn't extremely interesting the whole way through, but there is enough attention to detail and little bits here and there that stick out and make the experience as a whole worth it. I can definitely understand people getting bored with it, though, and it doesn't have a ton of replay value. On the other hand, the song structures are definitely more well-crafted and less chaotic than they used to be, so that's a plus.

It's definitely an enjoyable album. Not the classic that Street Horrrsing was for me, but it has its merits and it will definitely have its fans. I'm honestly a bit surprised that in the last few years I don't seem to have been hearing many other artists making stuff like this... but for now I'm satisfied with what we have so far.

6

Thursday Bloom – Halcyon

June 1, 2013 • self-released

Apparently there's this thing called the 12 EPs challenge where an artist will put out one EP per month for a year straight. It's a neat concept, and even though I barely know anything about it, some good is definitely coming from it.

Thursday Bloom's fifth entry, Halcyon, is ambient music mostly composed of string instruments and piano, like chamber music played very slowly. Though it's very simple, the atmosphere, textures, and aesthetics of each piece are all very well-realized. It feels like the sort of thing that might work well as a dramatic, somber film score, which is pretty neat.

On the other hand, its very short length does leave a bit to be desired (often the case with ambient and drone). But despite its short and perhaps slow pace, Halcyon is definitely an enjoyable little nugget of music; Thursday Bloom does seem like an artist worth looking into more.

6

Year of No Light – Vampyr

May 7, 2013 • self-released

Man, Year of No Light used to be a pretty awesome band. Nord was cool, as was their split with Rosetta and East of the Wall. But lately, especially with the split with Altar of Plagues, something's gone horribly wrong.

If you were expecting another typical atmospheric sludge metal album here, you'd be wrong, and not really in a good way. Vampyr is instead a disjointed collection of mostly ambient and drone tracks, with the occasional post-rock segment and merely three tracks (and only parts thereof) with any "metal" sensibility to them.

And, okay, that's fine, they're free to produce whatever kind of music they want. But is this good? Heck no. Good ambient-drone-albums need purpose; they need drive; they need a sense of cohesion. This album has none of those things. Almost every track is uniformly dull and lifeless; some tracks, like "Ombres", play up a bit of tension but then fall flat at the end when no payoff actually arrives. On the whole, though, it's perfectly inoffensive; so as background music it works all right, except for the occasional mood whiplash caused by the short songs blazing past.

So, Year of No Light, next time you're thinking about putting out seventy-two mintues (ugh) of music, make sure it's something actually thought-out and composed, not a bunch of half-baked ideas and sketches. Something interesting, regardless of genre. You might be perfectly capable of making a good ambient drone album, but this isn't it.

3

Eric Fourman – Seizures

April 4, 2013 • self-released

I was hoping this day would never come—the day I find an Eric Fourman album to be "just okay" instead of "amazing". I guess that goes to show how much I like his stuff, but at the same time I'm finding it difficult to find a lot to say about Seizures without sounding like I dislike it, when I don't. I'll try my best, though.

As usual, Seizures provides a collection of hefty ambient drone tracks, although this time around it's more drone and less "ambient", as Fourman's sound continues to go up in volume and down in subtlety. He hasn't deviated from the formula of ever-evolving, organic-sounding pieces, which still have that very uplifting-yet-somber aesthetic that keeps me coming back to these albums.

While on the whole Seizures is a fine album, it has a few missteps, like the slightly dull "Dry Mouth" and short "Thoughts of Death"—I shorter tracklengths do a disservice to ambient in general, but especially this sort where they need time to grow and evolve, but that's just me. Besides, the album also brings several strong pieces to make up for that, such as the powerful and grimy "Rapid Heart Beat" or the wide-open expansive sound of "Lost Touch with Reality", two tracks that definitely make this album worth listening to. (Or maybe I just like the distorted sound better; who knows?)

While it's a decent release, a lot of it seems to be treading the same old ground that we've had in just about every other album. And that's fine for truly quality titles like Cloudy, but Seizures unfortunately comes off as one of Fourman's weaker efforts. Again, that's not a bad thing, as it's still worth a listen, thought it's not particularly memorable in light of his other material. But don't let me dissuade you when it's (as always) a free download!

6

Eric Fourman – Cloudy

October 8, 2011 • self-released

More goodness from Eric Fourman today; I seem to never get tired of his brand of complex, layered ambient drone, so it's a good thing that he seems to never get tired of making it. Cloudy is one of his more interesting and diverse albums I've heard yet, and just as good as the rest.

I say "diverse" as this album is probably his most abrasive work (that I've heard), especially on the opener "rDNA", which has a much more intense sound than his typical output due to a substantial amount of low, gravelly noise. It's almost hostile, but there are still slight glimmers of the ambient to come hidden in the cracks. A very neat piece, and unexpected.

From there on, the album switches back to Fourman's standard soothing, ethereal sound, though there's still a hint of distortion undercutting most of the droning. It gives the music a bit more of an edge, which I quite like—not that his other stuff ever gets too corny for me, but here it's a nice change.

"1/2cc" stands out as one of my favorites on the album and deserves a special mention. It's a very simple track—droning synthesized strings, layers upon layers of them, slowly ascending and descending the minor scale. Perhaps it's that minor tonality, or maybe the slight dissonance, I'm not sure, but something about this track makes it just absolutely beautiful. By far one of Fourman's best pieces.

It's a rare drone album that feels glacial without dragging along too slowly; a lofty goal, and one that's attained here. As expected, Cloudy is absolutely worth getting a hold of, even if only for that brilliant closing track.

7

William Basinski – Watermusic

2000 • 2062

Most people probably only know William Basinski for his fantastic Disintegration Loops collection (and for good reason, I might add), but that doesn't mean that his more obscure works aren't worth looking into—in fact he's one of the most consistently good ambient drone artists I know. Even when he's not playing around with old classical loops,

The sound of Watermusic is easy to describe: very low, throbbing bass drones, glitches fading in and out, shimmering background synths, quick and subtle pulses of sine waves... lots of little basic loops played over each other in an hour-long layer. While the overarching texture doesn't really change at all throughout the whole piece, the way the loops interact with each other (due to their different lengths) is always different, ebbing and flowing like... well, water. It may sound boring, but even an intensely concentrated listen finds the work to be incredibly consuming. It's never exactly the same thing the whole way through: sometimes the glitches stop, or the bass drops out momentarily; regardless you never heard the same thing twice.

It may sound like an incredibly generic and boring piece from what I just described, but it really isn't. Maybe this is just me, but lately I've been finding this sort of long-winded but entrancing drone to be really captivating (also see Eliane Radigue's work, even more repetitive than this but just as engrossing). Watermusic is one of those pieces that evokes a lot of imagery—for me, not water, but maybe a tranquil, misty snowfall, or something like that. (Maybe that's because it's November out. I can see this working for any weather.) It's very calming and beautiful, one of those pieces you can put on that instantly changes your mood and everything you were worried about it just gone.

Yeah, so maybe this is another one of those stupid gushing reviews. But what bad is there to say about Basinski (ever, really)? Put it on and bliss out. That's all there is to it.

8

Minóy – Celebration of the Sunrise

1987 • self-released

Somewhere in the deep, dark recesses of the lost '80s underground lies Minóy, whom I know nothing about, except that he (she? they?) made a handful of obscure tapes of experimental music. This one, Celebration of the Sunrise, is a decent but ultimately disappointing representation of their work.

This particular tape harbors a collection of musique concrète, drones, electronics, and found sounds, all mashed up together in a long droning fever dream. It sounds like being lost in a huge '70s-era data computing center stationed underwater—echoing synth glitches and voice samples come from all sides while low scrapings and pulses drone on underneath. During "Celebration of the Sunrise", you're stumbling between racks of flashing lights while machines beep incessantly; then on "Nightride" you've escaped but are now trapped in a flooding radio room.

Of course, at an hour and a half with little variation to the sounds, Celebration of the Sunrise gets fatiguing quite fast. Each side of the tape is more or less the same thing for its entire forty-five minute duration, and they are each only interesting for about ten minutes. After that the music loses its novelty and becomes a bit dull.

It also means that there really isn't much to say about the album at all. It has two decent, if long, tracks, and that's it. It's disappointing because, had Minóy definitely had the potential to put together an excellent tape of shorter pieces similar to this, but it didn't happen.

4

Cristal – Apostate

July 16, 2012 • Flingco Sound System

Another Bandcamp discovery today, this time from the drone collective Cristal. I've never heard of them before, but they share a member with the relatively well-known Labradford (who I've heard of but never heard myself). While I'm usually wary of side project sorts of albums, Cristal is a pleasant surprise, albeit nothing truly interesting.

Apostate fits pretty snugly with the simple implications of the word "drone": long, slow sections of deep, foreboding drones, shimmering light noise, and the occasional creepy sampling. There's a lot of subtlety going into the textures themselves: minor perturbations in tones, small samples fading in an out, etc., the keep the album interesting throughout most of its runtime. There are a few places where it tends to drag on but I suppose in a drone context that's not necessarily a bad thing.

The album's atmosphere as a whole changes quite a bit (as hinted by the multiple movements)—sometimes it's very dark and murky, like watching a clanging submarine go by; other times it's a bit lighter and spacier. Either way, the album usually keeps on an incredibly dark mood, evoked perfectly by the cover art. It doesn't do the best job at switching contexts, though, as transitions between different pieces can be a bit jarring and break immersion. This is especially apparent halfway through the third track, going from a mostly quiet and simple tone to a loud, distorted, banging collection of noises—it's almost scary.

In the end it's not the best ambient/drone album ever, and I wouldn't put it up there with my favorites, but it does the job well and is a pretty satisfying listen. Definitely worth checking out, and it wouldn't be a bad idea to dig into their other stuff either.

6

Jarguna – Waiting for a Call from the Unknown

June 9, 2012 • Earth Mantra Netlabel

I'm always a bit skeptical of any album I find that was released on archive.org with a press release slathered in hokey New Age mysticism; such albums tend to be not very good, to put it politely. However, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with Jarguna's Waiting for a Call from the Unknown; it's a surprisingly good slab of ambient.

At nearly two hours, it's a pretty big time commitment, but fortunately Jarguna avoids the common trap of filling the time with dull repetition and the album is surprisingly diverse. Yes, it's all the same sort of spacey ambient, but it runs the spectrum from quiet, low, enigmatic drones in the first track to dissonant, almost scary ambient chimes in the second, to Echospace-esque minimal techno in the third track to glittery, spacey drones in the fourth. (And I really like Echospace, so it's already doing something right.) It's really nice to hear that kind of diversity in a long ambient album like this.

And Jarguna does a good job at each of these textures. The ambience and spacey drones are really quite good—sometimes ominous, sometimes pleasant and optimistic. Despite seeming like simple ambient, to me it seems that it was very meticulously composed with a lot of thought going into the compositions. The drones change constantly, keeping a sense of movement and fluidity through the album, and are accompanied by lots of little sound effects, glitches, and other instruments that drift in and out. It's a nice departure from the one-note drones you get on a lot of similar albums.

I might even go as far to say that the album isn't too long. Normally I get frustrated with LPs that go over an hour or so, but for some reason Waiting for a Call manages to fill the time very wisely. Nothing really feels like it drags on too much or gets too repetitive or boring.

It's really quite impressive, and the album gets better with each listen as well. Maybe I should do some more digging around the Internet Archive. There are apparently hidden gems to be found, for sure.

7

House of Low Culture – Submarine Immersion Techniques vol. 1

November 2000 • Crowd Control Activities

I've never like the concept of "side projects" much—how could House of Low Culture ever be as good as Isis or Agoraphobic Nosebleed or Sunn O)))? And one can't help but compare when hearing projects that are so tightly connected, almost as if Submarine Immersion Techniques was an Isis album. Even trying as hard as I can to take it on its own terms, I find it severely lacking, though it isn't terrible and has okay bits here and there.

It almost feels like you could call this release a remix album of Oceanic and Celestial, as it's loaded with Isis references and more than a few tracks are based around sampled guitar riffs from those albums. This gives it the benefit of immediately being familiar to anyone who's heard Isis before, and there's plenty of original guitar and other sounds as well to round things out.

You get two different kinds of music on Submarine Immersion Techniques: guitar-based tracks, and sample-based tracks. The guitar-based ones are by far superior: they consist of long stretches of repetitive and simple riffs, often with some sort of ambience and light noise going on in the background. It sounds a bit dull, but they do it pretty effectively; "Another Tragic One" is a standout example of the noise and guitar supporting each other. The more sample-based tracks, on the other hand, I'm not a fan of. Conceptually they mostly feel very inconsistent and out-of-place, especially with some of the more out-there sampling (AOL dial tones? really?).

So the wildly varying quality of the album makes it feel aimless and even a bit sloppy—very much like an experimental work that was basically thrown together without much thought as to what the end product would actually sound like. That's probably not very fair—I'm sure there was thought put into it—but I still find it difficult to find anything memorable or even worth relistening in this album.

I guess it's key to take in this album a bit differently than I normally would—take it as an excuse to hear Isis as run through an LSD filter and space out for forty-five minutes. It's not my ideal listening experience, but that's okay.

4

Zaïmph – Mirage of the Other

November 2006 • Gipsy Sphinx

I'm slowly beginning to realize that I think I like drone a lot more than I actually do. Maybe it's just the stuff I've been listening to recently, but I have heard a lot of the stuff and aside from artists like Tim Hecker or Sunn O))) it really doesn't appeal much to me. That, or Mirage of the Other really is a horrible album; hard to say. It's definitely a boring one, that's for sure.

Its three long tracks stretch out a handful of sounds each to their breaking points—mostly droning voices, guitar drenched in pedal effects, feedback, and subtle noise. It's actually not so bad in theory, and it's a setup that's worked many times before. The atmosphere is quite pleasant, calming; not necessarily beautiful, or serene, but nice enough. It just about always keeps to itself, never becoming actually noisy or harsh or loud.

But it would have worked much better if each track were, say, two minutes long instead of six or ten or twenty. Even in that twenty-minute track, the sound never changes—it's the exact same drone played continuously and nothing else. I like to think I have a good enough attention span for drawn-out music, but this just takes it too damn far. Try skipping around any of the three tracks: "Incandescent Landscape" goes from "quiet guitar noise" to "the same guitar noise, but slightly lounder". Nothing happens. Well, there are subtleties—the guitar lines wax and wane a bit, which is neat to hear for the first minute or so, but after that it becomes pointless.

Another recommendation for background music only, I suppose; as hard as I tried it was impossible to listen attentively to the whole thing as I found myself going into a stupor. Why is it so hard to find drone with focus?

3

Vales – Fever Monument

2010 • Baked Tapes

It's hard to find good drone these days, it seems. Or ever. Maybe it's just me, but I haven't felt very satisfied with much of it lately (though if you've read my recent drone-related reviews, you already knew that). But I'm persistent, so I'm giving Vales' Fever Monument a shot. Turns out it's not horrible, but it isn't great either, and it could use some beefing up.

Each of its two long sides has its own distinct character that builds up throughout their lengths. Side A is mostly straightforward, "traditional" drone: simple sound waves, short-stacked layers of sound; nothing too imposing. Side B takes on a slightly more aggressive, noisy tone. Both are good in their own ways and the overall sound is pleasant. There isn't much to say about the texture, though.

However I don't think the length of either track is quite justified. Rarely do I hear a drone track that deserves a fifteen-minute runtime, and neither of these are an exception. Side A is the worse offender; being relatively simple, it gets boring after a few minutes and its textural progression is barely noticeable. Side B does much better, having more temporally-local variation in addition to gradual progression, but it still suffers a little from overstaying its welcome. Both of them got a bit tiresome well before they were over.

Despite this (or maybe because of it) Fever Monument does make pretty decent background noise, something I wouldn't mind having on while reading or coding. And side B isn't too bad on its own. But it's still not really for me and probably out of scope for anyone not into the super-underground drone tape scene.

5

Procer Veneficus – The Cold Gloaming

August 14, 2007 • Students of Decay

In my enthusiasm for dark ambient and quest to build my collection, I've run into more than a few albums that exploit the genre's natural production simplicity—or what people seem to believe is simplicity. Uninteresting music is easy to make, and Procer Veneficus' millionth album showed promise but ultimately does little for me.

If The Cold Gloaming is anything, it's consistent: very low, subdued drones, processed guitars, and machine noises, all drenched in reverb, creating a very dark yet simple atmosphere. Each track is different in its texture; some are a bit noisier, some are more subtle. It sounds good in theory, and I did like this album at first, but its execution isn't great. The music just sits around, looping its drones without building any sort of tension or mood, as good dark ambient should. The music is definitely "cold", as advertised, but it stops there. It doesn't evoke any other emotion—it's not sad, it's not gloomy, it's not hopeful... it just sits there.

That's not to say the sounds aren't all bad; I really enjoyed the prominent bass frequencies on "Subcurrents" and "Deadmoon Summoning" (probably my favorite track) and headphones can't do them justice; they really should be listened to on good speakers. The glitchy atmospheric noise in "Everpale Mourn" is pretty nice too.

Sadly there isn't much else to say about this album; it is fairly uninteresting and while it happily doesn't drag itself on long, neither is it memorable in the slightest. As background music, it's alright, but it absolutely cannot hold itself up.

3