1.[laurentide]
New for 2005 from Absolute Zero Media
A new release consisting of one 50-minute dark ambient track, limited to 500 copies. The sample above is the first 10 minutes.
Reviews
Manifold
One fantastic piece of powerful, undulating ambient - often rising into stained vacuums of oppressive density. I played my promo copy over and over for months just because I enjoyed it, so I had to get copies in for all of you too. Over the course of nearly an hour, the work insitigates a handful of obvious shifts that propel it miles away. These shifts are spaced far apart, and in between, one feel is given many patterns and color. As to the sound itself, organic and acoustic sources are used rather than oscillators and harddrives, so there is a smooth, earthy feel to this work, though that does not make it clean or comfortable. Like some inevitable tsunami of power, the sound washes over us, creeps in at the edges and bends us with it's will. Then glassy, beautiful reaches are expanded before us, a delicated swirl of moth-wings, a cloud of sussurus, like wind between hair and fingers, a sadness throughout is also the spice that gives this grand mountain of sound its human feel. Neville Harson from Mandible Chatter is a part of this project. Great disc, too bad its not a regular cd, but hey, this is a particularly quality cdr release with full-color printing, quality disc and papers so its just as good.
Encomiast "Laurentide" CD
7/10 - [Absolute Zero]
This disc contains but one insanely long 53-minute track that fades in straight away to an ethereal set of textures that keeps the volume pretty low and swirls around with subtle shifts in volume and density. It becomes fairly clear within 10 minutes that that's basically going to be the entire track as well, so there's only so much I can say about it. It's one of those compositions that tends to gel with my personal tastes, so the length doesn't particularly bother me, though admittedly it does end up acting more as background noise – it's not exactly an engaging listen. Near the 20-minute mark things die back to a lower hum with a metallic sort of reverb hovering in the center, but at this point things start to thin out and stick with bass heavy undercurrents that take a more laidback ambient stance. Of course the character of the piece remains rather ominous, and the general aesthetic of the sounds is still along the same lines as the first chunk in the structure, but it is enough of a shift to note nonetheless. It's not until around 45 minutes in that the density starts to surge forth once more, as thicker drones eerily crawl back to the fore and things begin to slowly draw to a close. As far as the recording does I think a solid base is achieved, smooth and flowing. It could stand for a louder mastering job, but like many such explorations the significant amounts of low-end are probably contributing to the rather subdued output levels, which is understandable. The pro-duplicated CD-R comes in a nice looking package with abstract artwork (appearing to be strange landscape images or something of that nature) and a consistent color scheme. The only thing that stinks is that the label slapped two clunky black boxes dead center on the back cover with their logo and URL in them, which looks extremely tacky and disruptive. I realize this is a succinct review, but the disc really does remain steadfast throughout, so… the review would be just as long were it a 10-minute EP or an almost hour-long journey such as this. There's not much to it as far as variety's concerned, but I do like it, so while there's not much ground to cover, it's a solid offering from the project that should appeal to fans of the dark ambient genre.
7/10 - [Absolute Zero]
This disc contains but one insanely long 53-minute track that fades in straight away to an ethereal set of textures that keeps the volume pretty low and swirls around with subtle shifts in volume and density. It becomes fairly clear within 10 minutes that that's basically going to be the entire track as well, so there's only so much I can say about it. It's one of those compositions that tends to gel with my personal tastes, so the length doesn't particularly bother me, though admittedly it does end up acting more as background noise – it's not exactly an engaging listen. Near the 20-minute mark things die back to a lower hum with a metallic sort of reverb hovering in the center, but at this point things start to thin out and stick with bass heavy undercurrents that take a more laidback ambient stance. Of course the character of the piece remains rather ominous, and the general aesthetic of the sounds is still along the same lines as the first chunk in the structure, but it is enough of a shift to note nonetheless. It's not until around 45 minutes in that the density starts to surge forth once more, as thicker drones eerily crawl back to the fore and things begin to slowly draw to a close. As far as the recording does I think a solid base is achieved, smooth and flowing. It could stand for a louder mastering job, but like many such explorations the significant amounts of low-end are probably contributing to the rather subdued output levels, which is understandable. The pro-duplicated CD-R comes in a nice looking package with abstract artwork (appearing to be strange landscape images or something of that nature) and a consistent color scheme. The only thing that stinks is that the label slapped two clunky black boxes dead center on the back cover with their logo and URL in them, which looks extremely tacky and disruptive. I realize this is a succinct review, but the disc really does remain steadfast throughout, so… the review would be just as long were it a 10-minute EP or an almost hour-long journey such as this. There's not much to it as far as variety's concerned, but I do like it, so while there's not much ground to cover, it's a solid offering from the project that should appeal to fans of the dark ambient genre.