Music for Sad, Sleepless Nights?
Richard Yacuk | Whippany, NJ USA | 12/08/2004
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This is about as quiet and minimal as sound and rhythm can possibly get and still be called "music." The rhythms are not much more than the tiniest of white noise and clicks, in the DSP tradition of electronic music of the late 90s and early 2000s. The synthesized sounds are gentle, repetitive, and never pretend to be anything more than synthesized sounds, nothing remotely sounding like a violin or piano. Only the closing track, "always a part" has a familiar sound, that of a very persistent electronic snare drum, layered on top of a repetitive synth progression so reminiscent of Eno's `Music for Airports.' The repetitive nature of the sounds reminds me somehow of the early music of the Cure, also at times touching on hopelessness and despair.
On his album "Together is the New Alone," Mr. Costello has done something unusual in that he's created an ambient music that describes a landscape, but that landscape is perhaps the internal emotional landscape of a hopeless and downtrodden person. Three months later and I simply cannot stop listening.
For more good recent ambient electronic, see also Loscil, "First Narrows""