Artist:
Various
Title:
Strange-Eyed
Constellations
Constellations
Label:
Disco Gecko
Released:
4th Sept
Compiled by Toby
Marks (Banco De Gaia) with a title inspired by a Tom Hardy poem and
as tribute to Mike Barnett the founder of Beyond Records who featured
some of Toby's earlier works on their Ambient Dub series.
The album begins
with 'Dum Spiro, Spéro' by Astropilot, whose space style synth work
I've always admired but the four by four beats he often employs can
become repetitive. There's no such problem here with this beat less
number which hooked me immediately with it's sheer aural elegance.
This is followed by 'Sirens of Lorelei' by Dr Trippy as I've never
heard him before. Admittedly, there's an ethnic element to the track
which increases in the middle but either side throws a sheet of
angelic voices and flutes over a snail pace beat. The theme of mixing
angelic voices and tribal chants continues with 'The Inuit Snow Song'
by 100th Monkey a superbly chilled psychedelic dub and by
this point I'm tipping my hat at Toby's fabulous selections.
The looped sequences
that kick off 'The Future's Bright the Future's Incandescent' by
Radium88 immediately brought Fluke and Underworld to mind (albeit
with the brakes on) upon which an ethereal vocal leads to a more
eastern flavour and you'd be hard pressed to find a more chilled
vocal than this. The mood turns slightly darker with a combination of
eerie atmospherics and tribal beats with 'Floating World' by
Spatialize but the light shines through the darkness with some lovely
strings. This theme of light and dark continues with a Far East drone
fusion with the Shanghai 8am mix of 'Falling Tides' by the man
himself and surprisingly not under his Banco De Gaia moniker.
I'm not sure you can
go much slower than the dreamy tribal dub 'Festival of Lights' by
Oombata Key. Whilst the tempo is taken up a notch with 'Dimensions'
by Temple Hedz this piece initially layered with guru monologue and
complemented further with a lovely eastern vocal is still more than
suitably chilled. Moving towards a more experimental direction with
'Project Transmissions' by The Heavenly Hundred combines soft gentle
piano with fuzzy atmospherics and distorted orchestral tweaks.
Back under his Banco
De Gaia pseudonym 'To the Nth Degree' threatens to bring an uplifting
surge with it's opening tribal chorus but soon dips down into
soothing ambience with field recordings and piano. 'It's Beautiful
Mike, It Really Is' by James Eller is a wonderful combination of NASA transmissions, spacey fx and piano. Although, he may not be the first
to utilise this theme with the samples it works superbly well.
'Penates' by Sam Salem drifts back to the eerie atmospheric tribal
drones of some of the previous tracks and leads us to the climax
'Epiphany' by Andrew Heath where once again the piano takes centre
stage in a beautifully gentle melodic piece.
To summarise as with
many compilations some tracks appeal more than others. However, there
are some really strong tracks on here for me and I can't say I
particularly dislike any of them. The years not over yet but for me
this has to be a contender for ambient album of 2015. Full marks to
Mr Marks so to speak and hopefully this isn't the last we hear of his
selections.
Reviewed by Woodzee.
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