There was a lot of hype when this retired Serbian steel plant worker turned modular synth ambient wizard hit the scene. I managed to resist it until 2018’s Above All Dreams, when I fell hard. Or rather, I didn’t, because there’s nothing hard about this music: better to say that I plunged deeply into its soft pillowy loveliness.
Since then, the mystique has somewhat dissipated, perhaps inevitably, with the interviews and appearances and stuff. But the music on this, his first “proper” album since then (although there have been a scattering of other releases) is still just as special. Someone gave him an old Bechstein, which appears prominently on two of the five tracks and (I think, maybe?) in more manipulated fashion elsewhere. The results may not be quite as supremely serene as Dreams, but there’s possibly a little more depth to the compositions. And the closing number, the 11-minute On A Shattered Shell Beach, with its bassy hum, its stately two-note melody, and its distant echoey chanting-type sound, is an absolute classic.
I bought this from Boomkat. They call it Electronic, Dark Ambient / Drone / Metal.
