Album Review: temporal.Divergence by Peter Edwards Ambient

Peter Edwards, an ambient/dark ambient experimental soundsculptor based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, recording as Peter Edwards Ambient, landed on my radar screens only during the summer of 2018, shortly before releasing his third full-length CD album temporal.Divergence as the next chapter of dark ambient pentalogy. Available in digital formats since August 18th, 2018, the stunningly designed 6-panel digipak was released a few weeks later through Peter's own Caffeinated Monk Production label, the home of his previous two impressive CDs, suspended.Lucidity (May 2015) and binary.Abstractions (July 2017). To me, this was a huge discovery indeed!!!

Perfectly described as "ambient music for time travellers", this thrillingly immersing odyssey is ignited by the shorter "Prelude", which immediately sets the spatially tenebrous atmosphere. The 6-plus minutes long title track "temporal.Divergence" is fueled by bouncing cyber-tech pulses juxtaposed by industrial outbursts, razor-sharp beats, and heavenly hissing solitariness. A truly jaw-dropping introduction to distinguishably transporting realms by Peter Edwards!!! "quantum.Flux" at 7:33, the longest ride on the album, amalgamates massive drone reverberations with transcendentally helixing meridians and ear-tickling glimmers. Another aural spectacle! "revolution.Induction" masterfully merges hypogeally enigmatic stratums with perpetually ascending galvanic beacons and eerily rumbling fractals. Sonorously mindblowing! "gravField.Theory" dives into gargantuan depths, which are persistently illuminated by eternally galloping oscillations and piercing sci-fi narrations by Randy Savage, who also contributed his voice on the opening "Prelude". "dark.Matter" sails through unfathomably breathtaking realms, where intangibly thundering, yet tenaciously ambiguous magnitudes, commingle with inconspicuously emanating desolations and transmogrifying resonant vertexes. Beyond the gates listening splendor continues also through "causal.Continuum", when mesmerizingly barren heavy-duty beats collide with remotely roaring perplexes. "tempo.Kinetix", as indicated by its title, shifts into a vigorously driven scenario, perforated here and there by outbursting strikes, while immensely panoptic layers are guarding above. "time.Machine" merges abysmally engulfing murmurs with translucently flickering fragments and clandestinely arising oracular ephemerons. On "The Quantum Mechanics Of Time Travel Through Post-Selected Teleportation", mysteriously nuanced drones are reinforced by the narrations of a "quantum mechanic" Seth Lloyd of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Short epilogue "Gate.22180818" closes the album, but hidden also is a 4-minute untitled bonus track, which remains in fascinatingly enveloping monochromatic cosmic zones, percolated by gossamery evanescent traceries and ear-bending numeration.

Peter Edwards Ambient is a truly staggering exploration, which shifts each listener into magnificently adventurous portals, uniquely sophisticated, meticulously crafted and intriguingly rewarding. His 64-minute temporal.Divergence album is an all-inclusive magnum opus, both sonic and visual (design by Savage Internet Media), with deeply focused content and superb presentation. A vast display of artistic brilliance, which is, unfortunately, still hidden to a larger audience within the ambient drone soundscaping. On the science note, this must be some kind of a call I received only several months after experiencing the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, a Radio Astronomy Observatory located on the Plains of San Agustin in central New Mexico. I really wish I knew this gifted sound designer when passing by Albuquerque. Grab your headphones and immerse yourself into this exquisitely monumental futuristic journeying!!!

Reviewed by Richard Gürtler (Oct 20, 2019, Bratislava, Slovakia)

Album Review: Leaving the Hive by Steve Brand

Returning back to 2016, this year was very busy for Kansan dronescaper Steve Brand, who released several reissues of his older albums in new packaging and two brand new recordings, The Path Of The Heart (May, out on relaxedMachinery) and Leaving The Hive (September, released on Steve's Pioneer Light Music). The first CDr edition of Leaving The Hive, limited to 25 copies, comes in a 5"x7" bi-fold booklet featuring an additional poem card and signed art card. The cover image is stunningly delightful.

Subterranean gossamer flickers and meandering buzz of the bees reveal the title composition, nearly 22 minutes long "Leaving The Hive". The listener is immediately taken into the lushly colorful wild garden, yet surrounded by all mysteries of the natural environment. Then transmuting into calm cascades of longing quietudes, silently peaking vistas and fascinatingly embracing moments of stillness. But intensifyingly mindscaping drone spirals keep on permeating across the mesmerizingly organic stratum. Aural bliss!!! The 20-minute piece, "A Light Spinning In A Valley Somewhere", immerses the ears with a nocturnal symphony, but the stage is quickly stolen by high-pitched twists. Earwarming tranquility is juxtaposed by traversing piquancy, but then hypnotically galloping laid-pack pulses join the scenario, occasionally supported by Miette's meows. And after evanescing through soothingly engulfing contemplative path. Another rewardingly chameleonic composition, a thrilling beauty! The next track, "Simple Things", glides through enigmatically expansive sceneries, where lachrymosely humming blankets commingle with poetic piano glimpses. Ambrosial listening experience awaits here! The closing "Climbing A Mountain That Never Was" gets just over the 22-minute mark. An array of translucently glimmering tinkles persistently interacts with sinuously soaring meridians, balmy natural insignias and intangibly diaphanous hang drum traceries. Meditatively euphonious and intriguingly gratifying conclusion!

74-minute Leaving The Hive is undoubtedly another tour de force recording by Steve Brand, an ambient composer extraordinaire. Leaving The Hive might be a bit more experimental, maybe a bit more unsettling at times, but that's how it reflects the theme about the phenomena of Mother Nature and our presence in it. At the same time, this album is exquisitely transporting, exceptionally profound and significantly guiding with the hallmarking amount of peculiarly authentic mysteries thrown in. A true masterwork indeed!!! And by the way, I am way behind my review schedule, so it's not surprising Steve Brand has released in the meantime a bunch of new albums, for example three chapters of Near Series (all CDrs via Pioneer Light Music during 2017), Spiritual Science 2CD with Ishq (October 2017, reissue) and Near Series: Glow CD (April 2018), both on ...txt recordings or two CD albums on Dutch label Datableom, Upwelling: Emergence (January 2018, a compilation) and Graduated (May 2019). And most recently since August on Pioneer Light Music, the newest Counterintelligence CDr is available. It's quite obvious, all these sonic gems get my highest recommendation!!!

Reviewed by Richard Gürtler (Sep 03, 2019, Bratislava, Slovakia)