Hypnagogue
Joined: Oct 23, 2003 Posts: 16
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Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 12:32 pm Post subject:
Hypnagogue February reviews |
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New reviews are online at http://hypnagogue.netfirms.com
Some excerpts:
Tim Story, Buzzle
Tim Story’s newest, astonishing compilation of sonic portraits, Buzzle, is unique, complex, soothing, envigorating, and perfectly constructed. It is a mix of downtempo beats and lounge-inspired etherea fleshed out with intriguing electronic treatments. Story has opened the big bag of sounds and pulled out some new, unusual and perfectly effective elements that give Buzzle its incredible depth and character.
Ministry of Inside Things, Everlasting Moment
Listening to Ministry of Inside Things’ live 2-disc “Everlasting Moment” reminds me of how and why I got hooked on electronic music in the first place. The combination of Chuck van Zyl’s surgically precise sequencer work and Art Cohen’s aggressively psychedelic guitar improvisations bring me back to the time when a high school friend took out his copy of Tangerine Dream’s “Sorcerer” album and said, “You have to hear this.”
The CD also captures the pure chemistry van Zyl and Cohen have developed over years of playing together. I’m not sure which parts are cogently developed and planned and which are left to spontaneously generate, but most of the tracks, particularly when Cohen’s guitar is looping back on itself and echoing across space and following the starguide of van Zyl’s synths, are rich with a raw-edged sense of grabbing inspiration and making a moment out of it.
cyberCHUMP, Sankhara
My last exposure to the duo of Mark G.E. and Jim Skeel was their excellent outing, Scientists in the Trees, a delectable pastiche of upbeat electrogroove that I described as a “perfect sonic cocktail.” By contrast, Sankhara is a meditative blend of gently drifting synth washes accented with guitar, flutes, and voice. It is warm and calming yet thick with the kind of aural detail that is the mark of a cyberCHUMP recording. Each of Sankhara’s ten pieces start at the surface, with elements that warrant notice, and then slowly dive down and mellow as they spread and flow. |
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