The 'detailed review' of the album by the undersigned:
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The Waste Ground" - purely drone, air noise, machine noises, static. First 10 minutes is like laying in the backside of a server cabinet. At 10:50, some gongs are heard with plate reverbs for 2 minutes. Around 17;00 we get muffled speech (also backwards) popping up randomly with other strange noises. Bleeps and radio noises. Auto-sampling at around 22:42 (leads from old records, played quietly), some voice synths cut short. Muffled noises like your next floor neighbor moving furniture. Towards the end, a powerful pad synth enters. Overall: ambient for robots, extremely low intensity (aka boring), tense and a bit scary. Almost non-musical noise-ambient.
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The Desolate Waste Ground" - much, much more musical than 'waste ground'. Pads, athmosphheres, sampled women choirs (culminating at 9:30+), hundreds of chirps, blows and more pads. Drones and "electricity" effects, Japanese speech samples. Occasional auto-sampling, e.g. 'Dead Cities' samples from 'Quagmire'. Chinese speech with 'windy' samples and recurring choir at around 20:00. Overall atmosphere: scary, tense, mysterious, stressing, mystical.
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The Exhibition Hall"
Starts off with a reverb-ish drone. I guess that'd work as an alt- soundtrack to 2001: Space Odyssey, really majestic sound. After around 4 minutes, a field recording is mixed in of something sounding like horse riders walking in some mountain terrain, using a language I can't wrap my mind around. You hear bird chirps, stones on the road, wind, and tones of reverb. Around 6:44 drums come in for a hit, completely negating this track as an ambient piece (same with a beep heard around 2min.). They're gone after two seconds. Around 9min, a voice casually announces: "h3, take one" and a new set of drones appear, soon joined in y melodic pads for a change (first melody in this track). Voices and birds heard around 11min (at this point I think I fell asleep for some 30 seconds). At 14:30, familiar horse riders return followed by a quasi-melodic-pad. "This is roll... ehm... this is h2 of film documentary, the day is 24th of April, the background hiss is air conditioning which we cannot control so hope you'll all think it's amplifier noises that's what it sounds like to me" - voices appear in a field recording after 15min. Gloomy pads with insect sounds appear around 17min. Steps. Around 18min, sample-collage begins wherein the track looses continuity. Suddenly there are steps, door knocking, random pads, dog barking, seagulls, laughter and again things dissolve into reverbs.
Overall, not as musical as 'The Desolate Waste Ground', but more compelling as a 'journey-ambient' than the previous track due to high samples load.
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Cloudforms"
We hit off with a traditional 'scary' pad, kinda reminiscent of Biosphere's 'Insomnia'. "If you can't, you can" - says a male voice sample. Makes me think this entire album should come with a health warning for those faint of heart. Around 4min, water samples come in - that brings it further to the 'Stalker' album by Rich & Lustmord (which had loads of Tarkovsky's film water samples). At 7min, an entire battery of sounds enter resembling mutated crows, to culminate around 8min with a parade of brutal, percussive synth sounds (again, no sleeping to this one). Then this fades into sounds of harp, and all falls back into pad sounds again. Around 10-11 min you can hear some pot play as pads' intensity changes and wanes in waves, other tones join, sounds of remote bells... at 13, muffled vocals come with basedrum/synth hits (again waking me up), keys, pads, et voila, we're almost playing IDM around 14min. This ends around 15:30 with a nice piano miniature. All that fades back into pads minutes later. Well after 23min, the pads give way to a gloomy synth playing a two-note motive. Later pads, some 'drunk sitar' improvisations around 25min. Delicate choirs are heard towards the end. Overall: similar impressions to the Exhibition Hall, not too musical, 'scary' drone ambient trip, call it a 30-min long environment.Great background for intellectual work by the way (tested
).
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Subconscious Mind Communicates"
This is the same sound installation as "The Exhibition Hall", except, let's call it matured and a bit rearranged. Certain passages are identical, certain sample groups are unique here. But in general, it has almost the same length, and especially the second half is very near the aforementioned track. As mentioned in the previous posts, one can mix "Exhibition Hall" and this track into one.
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Wells Cathedral" (Wells Cat Hedral? AFX anybody?)
Driven, from first minutes, by reverberated organ sounds and pads. Some organs seem to play backwards (or that's suggested by the way they fade in). Samples of voices, conversations (sometimes reversed) are heard in the background, panning between the channels. Bird chirps and step sounds appear after 4min. At 6:30, a man's voice recalls trying to achieving some goal (nicely redacted so that we don't know what it's about), which fades into reverbs and sounds of rain. After about 8min, drum loops appear with occasional synths, making the track sort of musical for two minutes (again stripping its 'ambient' nature away) - but then after 10min that fades. Slight ambient passage, and then flute samples lead into another section with field recordings. Near 12min, drum loops reappear, almost as if faded-in stems from some IDM song. A voice says "lights!" at 12min15, and back into field recordings until the end.
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Source of Uncertainty"
The piece starts with slowly modulated static. Then, in come noisy pads (which blends well). The palette is then made richer by series of static-y clicks and hisses, with high-pitched pads at around 3:12 accompanied by a chill-out melody played on keys (piece still drowning in static). A nice "Pembertonian", melancholic piano composition enters at around 5min and overtakes the piece with statics from before dying out. Overall atmosphere of the piece is peaceful, optimistic and the later part: melancholic.
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Viewed from a Rural Hill"
The most well known piece from the LP comes in with atmospheric pads. It then develops into a gentle piece which sounds string samples drowning in pads, resembling baroque compositions if they were treated by say, Tangerine Dream. Close to the 4min mark, the entire piece collapses to a single string/violin sample, and then opens again but this time with guitar samples, which is all very melodic and relaxing. That combo loops towards the end of the piece, with more guitar samples joining it in a very tastefully done harmonious combination. A real treat this piece, could easily fit on 'Dead Cities' right next to 'Max'.
Album summary:
This is a monster of an album, in that it is huge in running time but also in ambition. First off: not an ambient album at all. If you use ambient music for meditation, calmin' down or chilling out (or sleeping, as I do), FOR CHRIST SAKE DON'T USE THIS ALBUM: YOU'VE BEEN WARNED! The amount of jump-scares, shock moments and so on, would scare the shit out of a Buddhist monk. Now, that said, it's more like sound collages, sound installation thing: first 5 pieces at least. Of course, as said, two of the installations are in fact the same piece, in two versions.
Like I believe
Enofa said in their vid, the entire album could easily be distilled into a CD, just take last 3 pieces, and make a matured -and far shorter - installation out of the first 5 pieces, so that it fits. But of course, no such treatment is necessary.
A lot of good music here, a lot of 'firsts' for an FSOL fan, definitely worth a listen but it is NOT your typical FSOL album. More like a slow and very, very long, meditative journey (with jump scares).
Let's see what we can see... everybody online, lookin' good
