The older I get, the less tolerant of excess I find myself. Which means that if you’re going to release a record that’s nearly two and a half hours long, you’d better have a good reason for it. Simply having a lot of stuff to get out isn’t enough; you need to be doing something that is only possible over this kind of length.
Luckily, that’s exactly what this wonderful work of melodic ambient does. There are swooshy strings, there’s fuzzy guitar, there’s occasional new-agey chimy things and the like. In passages, it meanders; in passages, it rumbles; in passages, it soars; in passages, it sighs. Take Water Study, for example, which starts with a kind of reverb-heavy anthem which reaches almost ecstatic heights (and which reminds me pleasantly of Fennesz’s Bécs)… and then it fades away to something much more contemplative, and we’re left with memories echoing around like a song in a magical cave. Each of the CDs here is one continuous piece (the first is described as pieces for live performance, indoors, and the second, outdoors — I confess that I can’t spot the difference). And, through some mysterious process, the power and the mood and the sheer loveliness build and build over the duration, and I end up not wanting it to stop. A rare case of more is more, perhaps, and a bloody brilliant record as well.
I bought this from Boomkat. They call it Modern Classical / Ambient.
dogrando writes about some records 