I thought the last release I heard from Canada's Aidan Baker was pretty good, and this limited edition CD-R is also a strong release focused around ethereal dark ambient textures that create fairly bleak and hypnotic moods. The tracks average more than 10 minutes each, and revolve around calm, quiet textures that often employ a certain sense of ultra thick, subtle melody. "Pretending to Be Numb" stands apart with some soft vocal samples and lightly distorted textures backed by carefully placed feedback and lots of reverb, and there are actually a few beats in the midst of "Hush" and "Mouches Dans Mes R?ves" - definitely adding to the hypnotic qualities. But for the most part it's a lot of droning low-end and relatively consistent atmospheres. The recording quality is really nice for what the music offers as well, because it's nice and clear, and nothing gets messy or anything. I guess it could possibly stand to be a bit louder, but not at the risk of ruining the smooth nature of the bass tones and such. Visually it looks alright. Everything was printed from a home computer so the text can be lightly pixilated, but the visuals are consistent and it looks clean for the most part. Very little text is used, which is nice, and the disc is hand-numbered out of 100 copies. I feel like the music is much bleaker and more sinister than the artwork would suggest, but that's okay since the packaging isn't necessarily bad. I feel like I should say more about this, because it is quite good, but the bulk of the material is really very similar, so what little variation exists isn't anything shocking. But I don't view that as a negative trait, because the disc flows well and doesn't get boring at all. Good work. I certainly hope the project continues to evolve in this direction.
[Mechanoise]
Running time - 56:35, Tracks: 6
[Notable tracks: Hush, Mouches Dans Mes R?ves]
Mechanoise Labs - http://mechanoise.free.fr
