Interestingly enough, sole Horchata member Michael Palace is a research scientist at New Hampshire's Complex System Research Center, and some of the textures in this work were derived from field recordings taken during trips to the Amazon forest. The label refers to the results as "illbient" and "dark-hop", and while not overly familiar with those terms, I can see that being somewhat accurate, as the calm, beat driven results are certainly rather ethereal in their ambience. The tracks average around four to six minutes each (give or take), consistently flowing along with dense, tactful drum programming alongside lush synths and subtle rhythmic noises that create slight musical leanings without coming off as concrete musical compositions or anything like that. It's certainly an even keel between music and experimentalism. "Saprobe" is a bit more emotional on some level, perhaps due to the melodies of the synths, but I also thoroughly enjoy the minimal vocal sample repeated for a short time deep in the mix. "Mychorrhizae" is more spacious and deep, certainly far darker and more effectively minimal than most of the other tracks. "Peridium", the remix track by Twine, is the one track that really breaks things up as far as style and structure, getting far more glitchy with tons of cutups and staggered patterns - keeping the same tonality and underlying sound quality, but certainly jarring it up a bit as far as cohesiveness. It's a good track, but I find it odd that it's not the final song on the disc, as it is a little bit of a disturbance. As with most all Ad Noiseam releases the CD is housed in a sleek digipack (here with a gloss coat) that looks very consistent and appealing. A gray band runs across the top, with photos across the bottom - all dealing with nature and using an orange-ish color scheme. Very clean and well put together. I think that more than an hour of this material can be tedious to take in one sitting, as in large part it's rather consistent for its duration... 45 minutes would've been plenty for me, but it's certainly not a bad disc at all. I wouldn't call it boring so much as a tad bit stagnant, but still an enjoyable and well-executed effort.
[Ad Noiseam]
Running time - 62:21, Tracks: 11
[Notable tracks: Cyst, Saprobe, Mychorrhizae]
Ad Noiseam - http://www.adnoiseam.net
