This sizeable collection of "environmental music" contains 16 tracks from 16 different international artists, and much of it does indeed come off as a literal representation of "environmental music", though "environmental recordings" might be more accurate. Things are generally very quiet and repetitive, take for instance the thick/windy rumbling of Francisco L?pez in "Untitled #151", which was created using materials recorded during a flight. Andrey Kiritchenko's "Babai" is dedicated to a province in the Ukraine and is the first track that gets a bit more active by splicing up raw and open recordings of a stringed instrument so that things sound a little jumbled and blippy. "Double Strapontine", by Lunt, is listed as being "associated to the subway station of Matabiau in Toulouse, France", whatever that means, and is one of my favorite tracks with its ambient hums and sparse ringing tones/stringed instrument notes - much louder than the preceding six tracks. The Moglass' "Koktabel" (also dedicated to an area of the Ukraine) is by far my favorite track, though. Using faint distortion over thick, almost orchestral ambient hums and drones that really conjure up an amazingly abstract emotional/musical quality. Radian also offers up a very nice piece of minimal and droning ambience, not too dissimilar from that of the following "Mojave", by Tom Carter and Vanessa Arn, though they sort of ruin the core beauty of their track with some unnecessary musical notes that really sound off to me. Dedicated to Huia, New Zealand is a composition from Rosy Parlane, another superb selection of droning dark ambient, here with a very bright and ethereal sort of texture to it - possibly the most simplistic piece herein, but also one of the finest. Kim Cascone's "DMZspace" was taken from a Korean spam installation and has the most glitchy and electronic style of any of these songs, softly beeping and cutting its way through almost five minutes with a calm demeanor that doesn't jut out from the overall atmosphere too much, while still defining itself as an individual. Closer "(Under the) Waalbrug, Nijmegen" is a live recording from Kouhei & Freiband, using a bit more distortion than any other contribution, but still remaining calm and consistent with the general tone of this collection. The CD comes in a nice digipack folder that's held shut by a loop of twine. The package unfolds in all directions to reveal the disc and a small one-sided insert printed on vellum, which looks quite nice - containing plenty of lofty text outlining the notion of psychogeography. I think that a lot of this work is very fucking good, but as a whole there are too many boring selections, and one or two that simply aren't very good at all. Those more literally based around the sounds of field recordings or whatnot are a little stale, and it takes a good 15 - 20 minutes for the CD to really start hitting the intriguing material. But I would classify this as one of the more truly experimental pieces of music I've heard as of late, and I think there are a lot of artists here worth checking out, so the good overcomes the bad.
[Nexsound]
Running time - 73:04, Tracks: 16
[Notable tracks: Lunt, The Moglass, Radian, Rosy Parlane, Kouhei & Freiband]
Nexsound - http://www.nexsound.org
