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.
[Absolute Zero]
Running time - 53:05, Tracks: 1
[Notable tracks: there's only one]
Encomiast - http://www.encomiast.com
