Various - Sanctuary: A Shanti Mix From The Interchill Garden

Interchill Records: 2005

What is it with this CD? Nearly every time I've sat back to take it in, I conk out so utterly, the back half of the compilation remains nothing but a sub-conscious blur. Heck, sometimes it happens after just the first track, Adham Shaikh's Emergence, which doesn't happen when I play the same piece of ambient off his Journey To The Sun album. I honestly think my recent commute playthrough is about the only time I've managed a single run of Sanctuary without succumbing to the sleep demons lurking within the CD, at least in the half-decade of time Interchill's compilation has been in my possession. No, having it playing in the background doesn't count – I'm not actively paying attention to the dream-inducing harmonies in those instances. Was this intentional on Interchill's part, a subliminal collection of music with more to come in this Spectrum Series? Maybe they realized the all-too potent effects Ishq, Mystical Sun, and Suns Of Arqa had on one's psyche when arranged as they are here, as no further volumes of this series since Sanctuary came out. Darn you, denizens of Salt Spring Island, and your seductive sound manipulations!

The first few times I played this CD, I honestly thought the first three tracks were one long song – that’s how zoned out I usually got! For a more logical explanation, compiler Naasko chose pieces of music that meld so seamlessly together, they're like jigsaw puzzle pieces made of melted butter chicken sauce. As mentioned, Shaikh’s incredibly meditative Emergence opens things, and is followed by Suns Of Arqa’s Cradle, Pt. 3, which utilizes similar droning pads but reduced to background texture. Instead, a charming flute leads us through scenes of calm, psychedelic nature. Enough of the pleasantry though, as Mere Mortals comes in after with Etcetrera, dropping some serious Indian dub grooves as sitars drone about. Despite having little in common beyond a meditative Far East mood, this is one of the strongest openings to a world beat ambient dub CD I’ve ever come across. No way Sanctuary can top it.

Indeed. Perhaps that's what unfortunately hinders my memory of this compilation, dashed expectations. There’s some lovely moments throughout – Ishq’s Yu is about as calm and relaxed as this music can go before getting into New Age sap, and Alucidnation’s Skygazer is a dreamy piece of seaside chill trance – but nothing hits the high of the CD’s opening salvo. Some tracks don’t even fit the mood established at the beginning, Kaya Project’s Slide more suitable for a Cafe Del Mar collection, and Gaudi’s Tribalove way deep in the dark Amazon jungle. At least Shaikh closes things out on a mysterious tip with Call Of The Delta (under his Ekko) guise), even if it feels by way of an Aegean Sea temple. Wherever you find your sanctuary in this world, right?

Ultimately, Sanctuary is a label showcase for Interchill, older material mixing in with (then) recent offerings. It’s a good sampler, but not indicative of their whole story.

Nurse With Wound - Salt Marie Celeste

United Daires: 2003

No freakin’ way can I do the Nurse With Wound legacy justice in a single review. This guy, Steven Stapleton, has been a staple (sorry) of the industrial scene since there was an industrial scene. He’s right up there with your Throbbing Gristles and Hafler Trios, and anyone worth their wacked-out experimental sodium chloride has had some passing exposure to NWW over the years. He has some one-hundred releases out, multiple collaborations, always having some new twisted sonic perversion to toy with our sensibilities of what constitutes music as abstract function. Oh yeah, the art crowd adores Nurse With Wound, and I suspect he has some affinity for them too, if only to take the familiar and warp them into something cheeky on his cover art.

That's the background out of the way, so the natural thing to do is get talking about one of his Very Important Albums. Ah, heh, maybe ask a Nurse With Wound scrub about that, because I honestly haven't a clue where to begin with his discography. I'm only covering this particular release, Salt Marie Celeste, due to it being a single-song LP, and in my back-up harddrive for that Guide thing. Mr. Stapleton deserves more attention though, so maybe I'll indulge in something else from him at a later date. Perhaps Acts Of Senseless Beauty, or To The Quiet Men From A Tiny Girl, or the charming Drunk With The Old Man Of The Mountains.

As for Salt Marie Celeste, there's not a heck of a lot to detail. This is dark ambient drone at its droniest. While not quite Jliat levels of mind-numbery, there isn't much to the endless synths playing for over an hour either. Some fifteen or so minutes in, something that sounds like a bicycle zips by. After a few seconds, it zips back the other way. This goes on for another two-thirds of the track's runtime. Somewhere around the twenty-five minute mark, soggy wood starts creaking, at first a few groans, then eventually almost an entire sea-bound vessel's worth. If Nurse With Wound was aiming at capturing the atmosphere of a derelict ghost ship, he definitely succeeded. Unfortunately, because these sounds just repeat themselves, it comes off like the VGM loops of a point-and-click adventure, and you're hopelessly stuck at an insidious puzzle. You were intended to solve it quickly, hence the short loop, but you can't, forever trapped in a broken game, unable to leave the Captain's cabin, unable to just turn the computer off. Oh, wait, you solved it after all, so here's some more synth drone to take you out. Yay!

If this sounds tedious, take heart that Salt Maria Celeste is the eventful version of this track, the original Salt from a couple years prior not even having the sound effects added. Yep, this album is a re-release of sorts, and Stapleton would go on to re-re-release variations of Salt a couple times after this as well. Talk about cheeky recycling of one’s back catalog.

Various - Saint-Germain-Des-Prés Café

Wagram Music: 2001

I didn't think much of it at the time, glancing at the back of the digipak in that used music shop some years past. A few names I recognized – Jazzanova, De-Phazz, and St Germain of course – but most were new to my eyes. And right they should have been, what with acid jazz, nu-jazz, and all their variations the sort of style I only indulged in on a whim from trusted labels (Ninja Tune, Studio !K7, Quango). Still, sometimes the best purchases are those you take the biggest chances are, and that itch for something ‘electro-jazz’ wasn’t going away. I mean, you really couldn’t go wrong with a DJ mix from St Germain, right? Absolutely not!

Except that’s not what Saint-Germain-Des-Prés Café is in the slightest. Oh, it’s definitely a nu-jazz collection, but aside from contributing a track, the Ludovic Navarre project has nothing to do with this CD. Rather, the name comes from the Paris district where extensional free-thinkers would engage in discourse over brunch in neighbourhood cafés. Or stare off into streets, smoking cigarettes, aloof in their demeanour. I don’t know, my knowledge of Paris coffee culture is primarily derived from parody. Point is, this was intended as a soundtrack to such locales, a fine enough idea with nu-jazz having some decent buzz about it back at the turn of the century. It must have been more successful than imagined, as it turned into a yearly series, which is still going on today! Sixteen volumes of the main, including themed offshoots, plus multiple box sets to bring you up to speed should you join the Saint-Germain Café craze late in the game. And here I thought it was just some random, forgotten DJ mix.

What’s so interesting about this series is it couldn’t have remained more relevant than in the here and now. Nu-jazz had its following back in the day, but for the most part you’d only hear the stuff at coffee lounges (this compilation, d’uh), hovels deep in urban hipster locales, or afterparty lofts. All of a sudden though, this style of music has seen a resurgence on streaming stations and side stages of the festival circuit, often getting billed as ‘electro-swing’. *sigh* Once again something old is thought of as something new, because a younger generation doesn’t know any better. Or maybe there is some difference, though tracks like Rubin Steiner’s Lo-Fi Nu Jazz #13 and Bugge Wesseltoft’s G.U.B.N.U.F. on here sounds about what a sub-genre called ‘electro-swing’ should be all about. Whatever, swing music was due for another retro-retro-retro return anyway, Brian Setzer having faded from current memory (but never forget Doop!).

And the rest of Saint-Germain-Des-Prés Café? Yeah, it’s jazzy alright. I personally prefer the tunes with some double-time bass action, but there’s plenty of different moods, vibes, and grooves throughout. I’d get into all the variations if I had much clue of jazz’s all too-many nuances. I prefer staying on the outskirts of this scene, thanks.

Petar Dundov - Sailing Off The Grid

Music Man Records: 2013

Petar Dundov should have waited more than a year. Yeah, it's good hitting that muse while the iron's hot, and folks were still glowing about Ideas From The Pond when Sailing Off The Grid came out around twelve months later. Unfortunately, the glow of the former overshadowed the latter, denying it the sort of anticipation that comes with long awaited follow-ups. Initial reactions to Mr. Dundov’s third LP in half-a-decade weren’t “holy cow, this man’s a machine right now!”, but more “oh, he’s got another one out already? Is he still doing that trance-hybrid stuff?” Yes, he is, and even that contributed to the relative apathy towards Sailing Off The Grid.

That’s not to say Mr. Dondov suddenly lost his skill at crafting pieces of hypnotic, synthy works. Nay, he’s in as fine of form as with Ideas From The Pond. Heck, it wouldn’t surprise me if these tunes were from those sessions, or at least feeding off the same well of inspiration – it’d explain the quick turnaround between albums. And right off with Enter The Vortex, we’re in familiar ground, a lengthy, beatless composition of layering, morphing synths that, while not building to anything in particular, serves as a solid start to Sailing Off The Grid. Very much in the old school of Berlin on that one, and keeping with the vintage vibe is Yesterday Is Tomorrow, all space synth tastiness for a modern era. If you’re coming to this album looking for any hints of Petar’s techno of old, forget it, the remaining three uptempo tunes (Moving, White Spring, and the titular cut) having more in common with trance than anything else. Okay, White Spring has a rhythm reminiscent of Belgian New Beat, but there’s common lineage there, more so than techno or house in any event.

The remaining tracks (Spheres, Cradle) feed more off Berlin-School compositions than anything contemporary. Meanwhile, at eleven minutes of runtime, synth layers in Sur La Mer Avec Men Ami meander a bit much, Mr. Dundov’s seemingly content wandering about the ambient waters he creates along the way while eventually building to something of a crest. It’s all quite pleasant but not as engaging as his other works.

Minor quibbles aside, Sailing Off The Grid is definitely a strong sequel to Ideas From The Pond, so it begs the question why this one hasn’t garnered the same buzz. As mentioned, the quick turnaround likely didn’t help, but here’s an additional theory to this quandary: folks figured Ideas a one-shot challenge on Mr. Dundov’s part. He set out to make a trance-but-not-trance record at a time when critics and casuals still associate the word ‘trance’ with awful club music, proving the genre can still have merit when approached correctly. Having proved it, however, what need was there to do another? Love of the music, obviously, which is reason enough for y’all to scope out Sailing Off The Grid for yourself. For many others though, one dip into these ponds was enough.

Sacred System - Chapter One: Book Of Entrance (2015 Update)

Reachout International Records: 1996

(Click here to read my original TranceCritic review)

Ah, nuts. There was some very crucial information that needed updating from my original TranceCritic review of this album. I've already wasted it in the review of Dub Chamber 3 though. I could have burned some word count with it, because regarding the music itself, there's not much else I can add to Book Of Entrance. Eh, what the heck, I'll just copy and paste it here. It's not like anyone remembers a Bill Laswell review from twenty-nine months ago. Woo, self-plagorization!

Dub Chamber 3 is one of his solo efforts though; or rather, him and whoever he invites over for a jam. Don’t bother looking for a Dub Chamber 1 or 2, as they don’t exist. This was, however, his third album released on Reachout International Records, the two prior being his Sacred System material. To confound discographers further, his fourth ROIR album was once again as Sacred System, but also titled Dub Chamber 4 (subtitled Book Of Exit, a nice call-back to the first album). And, that’s not even the end of his ROIR output, where he released a compilation of Sacred Dub System Chamber material, plus a collaboration project with Roots Tonic, not to mention- help! I’m being swallowed by Laswell’s discography! It’s so massive, it has a gravitational pull of its own!

*whew* Good thing I escaped it a second time!

But yes, I incorrectly titled this album way back when, in part because I figured Bill Laswell’s name was more important for referencing than the alias he used for Reachout. Also, everyone just calls Book Of Entrance a Laswell album because that’s what it is, but as Lord Discogs lists this as a Sacred System album, here it is correctly titled thus.

One other thing I feel needs clarifying from that old piece of writing is my claim that ‘bass-driven’ music isn’t terribly popular. Why, 2005 Sykonee must be an imbecile if he believes that. Just look at all the forms of bass music that dominates electronic music. Hell, even rhythmic reggae dub, from which Laswell is drawing influence from on Book Of Entrance, has a dedicated following of rastas and spliff heads. All true, but very seldom are those instances where bass leads through improvisation with everything else complementing. Even modern bass-heavy genres like trap and dubstep are about the effects those low frequencies have on your mind and body rather than guiding you through a musical journey. I doubt many festival goers would have time for the lengthy sessions Laswell indulges in. Hell, I sometimes don’t, and I actually like most of Bill’s material.

Finally, Book Of Entrance kicks off the huge block of music within my collection known as “Albums Beginning With ‘S’” – with a mislabel, of all things, heh. There are a few other mislabels, but even dismissing those, this could take me through the summer. And my reward for its completion? Taking on the equally massive section called “Albums Beginning With ‘T’”. The obsession must be satisfied!

ACE TRACKS: July 2013

*SIGH*…. So much for my hockey hopefuls. Why do I continue routing for teams that never quite make it? Maybe I just dislike the successful teams because they’re always beating the teams I like. In that case, go Tampa Bay Lightening, I guess. I’ve no quarrel with you, even supported them during their first Cup win (because LOL Calgary Flames), it’d be cool to see Steve Stamkos win a Cup early in his career, and all those goals Tyler Johnson’s scoring would be such a waste if he doesn’t win Conn Smythe. Doesn’t make me any more interesting in the NHL Playoffs though – heck, the NBA Playoffs are looking more intriguing about now. The remaining teams are all title starved, the last any of them having won a Ring two decades ago, another four decades ago (to say nothing of the zilch victories of Atlanta and Cleveland). Some long-suffering fanbase is gonna’ be celebrating and flipping cars long into the night this June! What? Oh, right, here’s ACE TRACKS: July 2013. Knew I was ignoring something.


Full Track List Here.

MISSING ALBUMS:
Mind Distortion System - He Claims To Be Not Human

Percentage Of Hip-Hop: 26%
Percentage Of Rock: 28% (though a chunk of it is technically Neil Young folksy stuff)
Most “WTF?” Track: Ice Cube - You Can’t Fade Me (seriously, those lyrics)

Another weird month, this one. It started with a couple Greatest Hits CDs, got seriously grimy with Ice Cube and Grooverider jungle, chilled for a bit with Swayzak, Kruder, and Dorfmeister, a little UK mainstream with Fatboy Slim and Gorillaz, banged it out with hard desert trance, Neil Young came in with an acoustic guitar, and ended with some mishmashed stuff at the end. Clearly the only way to treat such an erratic collection of tunes is another alphabetical playlist. Except for AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted and Steve Miller Band’s Greatest Hits, which are lumped at the end as full albums. A bizarre, unworkable contrast, you say? Heh, welcome to what it’s like listening to all this music as I have for the last couple years.

Kraftwelt - Retroish

Hypnotic: 1998

I’d be first in line piping up the group that started as Audio Science never got their due, though I can’t say they’ve had an unsuccessful career either. To this day they’ve kept busy, mostly operating as a remix group called Patchworkz, providing rubs to some of dance-pops more notable names (Billy Ray Martin, Camille Jones, Ida Corr). Meanwhile, as Merv, they released a smattering of singles that fit quite snuggly within the early German dub techno domain that Basic Channel outright dominated, and continue using the alias for DJ mixes. Then there’s Kraftwelt, a project that almost certainly started out as nothing more than adding a few additional tracks to Cleopatra’s Tribute To Kraftwerk CD, but got a significant mileage with afterwards. Too much, in fact, as it’s clear by this second album of Kraftwelt material the ideas had worn thin.

The first one, Electric Dimension, was about as solid an ‘electro album by way of Kraftwerk in the ‘90s’ could have been, considering the genre was practically dead mid-decade. The electro revival was still a few years off, and even though a few outlier acts were found making the stuff, fewer gave it much heed. A deliberate throwback though? Sure, why not, there had to be a few folks feeling the early pangs of retro in their soul – an escape from big funky beats and bangin’ rave techno-trance. Bring back the original German robots, yo’.

And they did, but that’s for another review. Instead, I’m talking about the follow-up to Electric Dimension, Retroish. The album kicks off promisingly enough, the titular cut featuring plucky hooks, a bare-bones 808 break, and enveloping bassline as heard in an huge, empty robot factory. There’s even a little warbly solo that sounds like it was performed on an old, unkempt Moog, about as retro as anything could sound in 1998.

Following that, however, Kraftwelt settle into a schizophrenic game of not knowing whether they want to go proper techno or remain retro electro. It’s as though the group is lost in a transitional year between the two, sounding a bit of both but not committed enough to the other for things to work. It’s no surprise the best tunes - Metro, Centershade, Beautybox, The Eighth Approach, Au Revoir - remain firmly in the era Kraftwelt are drawing influence from, though even some of those are kinda’ chintzy. Okay, Beautybox gets away with it, only because it’s got such a silly, happy rhythm going for it.

Compared to Electric Dimension though, these sound like leftovers from those sessions, rounded out by some of the group’s techno tracks given the ‘Kraftwelt aesthetic’. Quite a few of these tunes - Slipstream, Back Seat, Rush - would have sounded brilliant in the year 1988, when Detroit was forging ahead from electro of old and creating its own, unique brand of electronic music. Unfortunately for Kraftwelt’s Retroish, the year is not ’88, but rather ’98, and sounding out of time in the here and now.

Escape - The Futurescape

Ambient World: 1994/2011

Just when I thought I’d escaped all things Namlookian for a while, I get pulled right back in, ironically with a CD from his project Escape. Fortunately, we’re dealing with the proper thing in this review, an original album from ye' olden days of Mr. Kaulmann's career …sort of. The original-original self-titled Escape album was a two-disc affair, gathering tracks off the four Escape EPs onto one CD, and the other dedicated to an original composition titled The Futurescape. Fax +49-69/450464 being Fax +49-69/450464, only one-thousand copies of the CD were issued and was soon out of print, but hey, that’s why the sub-label Ambient World was established early on, offering reissues of high-demand FAX albums. Erm, I guess Escape wasn’t terribly high in demand, as this particular CD didn’t come out until 2011, way late in Ambient World’s lifespan (and also now defunct with all other FAX sub-labels).

Can't blame folks for the alias' obscurity though, as Escape is often overshadowed by Namlook and Dr. Atmo's other collaborative project, Silence. That one was where all the big ambient epics came about, whereas Escape often played the safe bet in attaching hard trance and acid to its name. There were a couple decent cuts from those efforts (Escape To Neptune's still a blinder of a trip), but as nearly every German with a TB-303 was making trance in those days, quickly got lost in the glut despite providing ambient versions on the B-sides. After that, ol' Peter and the Doctor continued focusing on Silence whenever they hooked up, Escape and its album relegated to a mere footnote in the FAX discography. Its remarkable Ambient World even got around to a reissue for the project then.

As for The Futurescape, this isn't a strict reissue of the original self-titled Escape double-discer – no way old hard trance makes a lick a sense on a label called Ambient World. Neither is it a re-packing of that second CD either, since there were enough tracks on the experimental downbeat warranting another listen. Thus we have a condensed version, keeping the two biggest 'hits' under the Escape banner (Trip To Mars and Trip From Mars), an extended excerpt of Atmospheric Processor (ambient version of Escape To Neptune), and most of The Futurescape intact (about four minutes of ultra-minimalist drone from the opening cut out, thank God).

The Mars tracks are mostly dark drones with little splashes of sound echoing about. The only difference between the two is To plays forward, and From plays backwards. Atmosphere Processor pulls the same trick too, though has more rhythm going for it. As for The Futurescape, it’s a lengthy, moody affair, befitting the sci-fi theme most Escape tracks had. Sometimes it drones about with eerie samples, other times a bit of acid rhythm emerges, and other parts feature a brisk, soft techno beat guiding things along. And repeats. A lot. Honestly, it’s not a classic by FAX standards, but worth a listen if you’re digging deeper into Namlook’s discography.

Nick Höppner - Folk

Ostgut Ton: 2015

Mark Knopfler is a very important person in the world of rock music. Having cemented his legacy with the Dire Straits (Money For Nothing, Sultans Of Swing, many more), he's forged ahead with a solid solo career too. Argh, I'm doing it again! Every time I see Nick Höppner’s name, my brain tricks me into registering it as ‘Mark Knopfler’. There's a few similarities between the two, but not so much I should be suffering from whatever this short-cut cognitive response is called (help me out, psychologists reading this by happenstance!). My only answer to this mystery is that ol' Nick is such a new name in music to my eyes that my brain can't help but think this letter arrangement is associated with one I’ve longer familiarity with. So, Mr. Höppner, if you're reading this, get making more music pronto, and expunge Mr. Knopfler from my grey matter. Or, you know, because you make some darn fine tunes too.

This may be my first exposure to his name, but Höppner’s been active in the Berlin-based DJ for some time now. Along with Lee Jones and Carsten Klemann, he saw some success in the last half of the ‘00s as My My, releasing deep house, tech-house, and minimal deep-tech house, because of course. Jones and Höppner have since settled into solo careers, with ol’ Nick finding a home at Ostgut Ton, mostly falling lock-step with their brand of bunker techno and house. It comes with some surprise then, that his debut album Folk has a remarkable amount of melody in it. Why, some of it could even be-

Okay, probably not, but with plenty of hypnotic groove, gated synths, and flowing pad work, you can’t blame a guy for getting a ‘tee-are’ vibe on this one. There’s been a fair bit of techno getting in touch with its lighter side this decade, undoubtedly thanks to the almighty power of retro when the genre was comfortable with fun future-funk as it was painting dystopias. With cover art as chintzy as Folk’s, you can tell Mr. Höppner didn’t want his first LP an are serious techno outing, though he does allow for some menace in the thumping Grind Show.

Instead, Paws shuffles with a subdued shimmering synth line, Mirror Image has a charming, gaudy lounge vibe, Airway Management cruises high altitudes with broken beats, and Rising Overheads has no shame in reaching for those lasers. Elsewhere Mr. Höppner goes to his breaded butter of tech-house on the deeper side (Relate, No Stealing, Come Closer), though even these often float on blissy, Balearic pads. The only cut on Folk that goes for the tough, warehouse business is Out Of, which adds some welcome spice to an otherwise mellow album.

Even if you’re not in the market for tech-house, I recommend giving Nick Höppner’s first LP a go. There’s much to enjoy within its tidy nine-track runtime, and is a far better electronic album than Mark Knopfler would make.

Various - Die Welt Ist Klang: A Tribute To Pete Namlook (CD8)

Carpe Sonum Records: 2014

And finally we've come to the end of Die Welt Ist Klang. Not as bad of a slog as I feared going in. Heck, I wouldn't mind returning to a few of these CDs in another week or two after letting them sit fallow from my memory. Can't say that for many other box sets I own, much less collections of music running near the one-hundred mark (I haven’t played anything from The Electro Compendium since January 2013, and I like electro!). It's just too much for this soul to take, and my mind boggles at the thought of super-hardcore fans subsisting of nothing but FAX material. There's a reason Pete Namlook's label dwindled in prominence as the years went on – many ears were more than sated even by the turn of the century.

Yet, despite so many artists contributing to Carpe Sonum's epic turbo-hyper tribute, I must list a few names I'm disappointed didn't show up. Call it a sense of completion even on something as comprehensive as this box set. Here we go... Mixmaster Morris. Klaus Schulze. Uwe Schmidt. Christian Thier. Pussylover. Aphex Twin. Brian Eno. Steve Roach. Alex Paterson. Kraftwerk. Jimmy Cauty. Banco de Gaia. Phil Wilde. Neil F’n Young. Anyone from Ultimae. Anyone from Nashville, Tennessee. A humpback whale. Okay, some of these are just wishful thinking, but imagine the possibilities, eh? I'm sure Mr. Kaulmann would have encouraged you to.

Enough of that. After seven CDs of ambient, ambient techno, chill-out breaks, and a little trance too, what sort of music will Carpe Sonum take us out with for the final disc? By going back to ambient it seems, though more of an old-school flavour than CD5 went. After all, CD4 had all the outlier genres, and as the back-half of Die Welt Ist Klang is intended to mirror the front-half, it’s only natural for CD8 to get a little Berlin-Schoolie on our ears. There’s even an air of modern classical with Mass Roman’s Everyone Has It Now and Ceder’s Moog model D aC final (live take #6). No jazz, though.

I must admit many of these tracks have me thinking of many older acts. Metasonica’s Eternal Return sounds like its getting its mojo from Enigma. Terra Ambient’s Unfertig ohne Sie feels more appropriate for a New Age shop (though a tasteful one). Boreal Taiga & 3Music’s Piap-Bai could be a handy contribution to that Twin Peaks relaunch. The Garwin Project’s Solar is so Pink Floyd, I totally see Dick Perry in the studio despite the lack of a saxophone solo.

And then there are the final two tracks. After eighty-nine pieces of music, these have to be your money shot, the lasting impression of a Pete Namlook tribute. The second-to-last goes to James Lewin, an unknown to Lord Discog’s mighty well of knowledge, providing a minimalist, haunting piece of drone. It’s followed by Stormloop’s Snowdrift, where twelve minutes of widescreen ambient pads and synth washes shimmer and cascade like you’re in... well, y’know.