Woah....how to kill my happy mood. Dying alone  - now theres a thought. Better move onto the music. Bvdub has been part of the Pop Ambient series and the words Gas and dub techno are mentioned in the press thingymajig so I'm quite excited about this. It certainly lives up to the billing with superb drifty atmospherics, plucked acoustic guitar hidden somewhere under it all. Tracks seem to start with traditional sounding instruments plucked in a gently folky style before reverberating away into ethereal and ambient soundscapes. At its best such on the stunning 'To Finally Forget it all'  the effect is akin to being carried along on some kind of cloud/cotton wool type material, the music resembling a softer Gas, dub techno rhythms just audible beneath the ambient gorgeousness. Really beautiful stuff & highly recommended.

The tranquil soundscapes  of his current oeuvre may occasionally suggest otherwise, but change rather than consistency has been the most important factor in the life of Brock van Wey. Classically trained on the Piano and Violin as a boy, he quickly found himself in want of more radical forms of expression. Death-Metal, with its unfiltered aggression and furious power, turned into a first focus. It was soon to be replaced by the overwhelming sense of community and uplifting energy found in the Deep House and Trance scene. In 2001, however, disgusted by the downward spiral of all but everything that had attracted him to it in the first place, van Wey chucked in his job as a DJ, sold his entire record collection and moved to China.
It was the spontaneous realisation of a life-long fascination for a country that had always seemed to him the one place on earth which could offer him peace of mind. His plan didn't turn out to be quite as healing as expected. But it did allow him to step back from what happened, re-start his life from scratch and discover the things that truly meant something to him. Needless to say, music was still among them. The subsequent founding of his Quietus-imprint, the genesis of his bdvub-project as well as the increasingly prolific string of releases under that moniker all point to a man emerging from the void with newly found passion and will. If van Wey should now deal with the „art of dying“ at a point in time when his second coming is in full bloom, then this is merely the logical conclusion of continuous strife for a right way to live.
In a sense, too, „The Art of Dying Alone“ is the organic culmination of a work  forever spiralling around themes of isolation, the strength found in solitude and the eternal riddle of „where to now“. Van Wey knows there is no clear-cut rational answer to these questions, but by returning to them again and again, he is circling a spiritual truth offering inner calm and consolation. This constant mulling-over of the same issues may also explain the compositional processes at the heart of the album: Minimal loops, mostly comprising of a short melodic or rhythmical statement, gradually grow into dense textures washed over by wave after wave of soft electronic pads and choral voices, until their underlying sense of motion is all but canceled out.
Slowly but surely, the listener's attention is directed from thematic spikes to the inner development of a piece and the delicate interaction between its different layers: Call-and-response patterns, subtle shifts in loop-structure, the appearance and dying-down of tiny acoustic elements, ghost melodies created by the overlap of two adjacent textures. Time, as a medium through which the music flows with utmost grace and patience, is left to do most of the work and it is paradoxically by taking elements away rather than adding some, that climaxes are achieved: A momentous epiphany occurs towards the end of „No More Reason Not to Fall“, when van Wey suddenly silences the main voices, leaving his audience with nothing but a trace of rhythm and the beguiling cobweb of sustained tones underneath, hypnotically closing out the track with several minutes of torrential sweetness.
The pointed simplicity of these structures is belied by the unerringly precise arrangements, which act as a summary of van Wey's long and winding musical path. Most notably, as with previous allusions to his classical background, he has organised „The Art of Dying Alone“ as a tone-poem-like, almost 80-minute-long epic for an electroacoustic chamber music ensemble composed of guitar, piano, vocals and strings, whose tendency towards timbral coherency and warmth lends the album an air of both solemn and sensuous concentration. At the same time, there are references to his involvement with dance and house. „To Finally Forget it All“ could just as well be a trance-tune slowed down to the pulse-rate of a dreamer, the four-to-the-floor bass drum turning into a poetic heartbeat. A triangle of influences is thus manifesting itself around the axis of Contemporary Composition, Ambient and Electronica, held together by the gravitational force of a twin-peaked tension-arch: Even though aforementioned „To Finally Forget it All“ seemed to have brought things to resolution at around half time, van Wey arrives at the conclusion that the journey isn't over yet. For a full forty more minutes, he dives back into the ocean of oblivion, this time finally finding consolation at the shores of the closing title track.
Whether or not, as a listener, you'll derive the same kind of appeasement from the experience depends greatly on your involvement. A lot here is communicated between the lines, transmitted in morse code which requires active participation to be deciphered. Beauty, in the sense of a focus on mere aesthetics, does not seem to be of any relevance. On the contrary, those looking underneath the surface will find that the album consciously plays with motivic ruptures, just as steady lines are constantly broken apart into stuttering, skipping and asymmetrical repetitions. Life doesn't move with picture-perfect precision, van Wey seems to say, and meaning is not something you're given for free. His unconventional CV awards him some natural authority in these matters, but at heart, the message of „The Art of Dying Alone“ is one of universal applicability in these complex times: In a life that eschews rationale logic, constant change really is the only way to attain some form of consistency.

By Tobias Fischer - TOKAFY

What separates bvdub's work from many other producers working in the same field is that something feels like it's on the line. There's no concept, no explanation that needs to be given about the materials used in its construction. Brock van Wey seeks to create a direct line with the listener. It's emotional, and nakedly so. What else would you expect from a guy who titles songs "I Knew Happiness Once" and "Wish I Was Here"?

Depressing stuff, but Van Wey's work has always had a light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel quality. Every minor piano chord has a tinkling harp coming along (relatively) soon after to brighten things up. On his newest album, The Art of Dying Alone, this now includes the human voice more than ever before, even further underlining van Wey's humanistic bent. They never quite get to say anything intelligible. But that should come as no surprise really. In RA's interview with van Wey last year, he touched on the topic of imagined utopias. To have them say anything in particular would break the spell, and take away from what you think they might be singing.

Instead, they act like the bvdub standbys—the lulling pianos, the cumulus synths, the gently plucked guitars. Just another source of material to pile into the inexorable droning waves of sound. Those waves are reminiscent of some of Pop Ambient's original contributors—Markus Guentner, Ulf Lohmann, Dettinger—which take techno's belief in the power of repetition and maps it onto ambient's cooler sound palette. You can still hear traces of van Wey's beat-centric work in the pulsing momentum that is underlying much of Dying Alone.

It seems beside the point to describe in depth any of the tracks here. (Again, the spell.) But it's worth noting that van Wey clearly cuts the album in half—"To Finally Forget It All" and the title track provide a sort of closure. They're both around 20 minutes long, and rank among the producer's finest work to date, similar to the mammoth CD "single" To Live. "Finally" relentlessly pushes its gleaming elements forward, adding another unbearably emotional element every few minutes or so. "Dying Alone" comes in parts, climaxing in a beautiful mess of human voices. It's all essential material from one of the few artists working in this milieu that sounds relevant in 2010.

RESIDENT ADVISOR

Sixth Review

Avendo come premesse da un lato la matrice concettuale "ghiacciata" alla quale è improntata l'etichetta Glacial Movements e, dall'altro, le produzioni del cerimoniere ambient-dub-techno Brock Van Wey, non può che suscitare grande curiosità la pubblicazione da parte della label romana del nuovo, corposo lavoro a firma Bvdub.
L'incontro tra questi due universi elettronici - diversi ma non poi così distanti - ha rappresentato un'occasione artistica estremamente stimolante per gettare ponti tra le recenti opere di Van Wey e l'immaginario isolazionista, cristallizzato nelle sette precedenti uscite dell'etichetta fondata e curata con passione da Alessandro "Netherworld" Tedeschi.
Ne risultano quasi ottanta minuti di musica, che offrono la personalissima interpretazione della solitudine artica da parte del musicista americano - ormai stabilmente trasferitosi in Cina - infrangendo in parte la "barriera ritmica" e l'ottundente tenebrosità di coltri di drone e saturazioni ambientali che hanno connotato le precedenti pubblicazioni a tema dell'etichetta romana. Al contempo, Van Wey depone parte sostanziale dell'impetuosità cosmica e sognante delle sue ultime opere (l'album "We Were The Sun" e la lunga traccia "To Live"), in favore di loop avvolgenti, miniature elettroacustiche e fremiti poco più che accennati.
Le sei tracce (quattro tra gli otto e gli undici minuti, due a cavallo dei venti) si immergono nelle abituali profondità ghiacciate, conservando tuttavia tepori elettroacustici e residui di presenza umana, sotto forma di vocalizzi distanti che di tanto in tanto puntellano saturazioni in progressivo addensamento.
L'approccio solipsista di Van Wey alla tematica artica non si manifesta in un flusso drammatico e ottundente, quanto invece in un isolamento contemplativo, del quale l'artista cattura riflessi e sfumature policrome in maniera analoga a quanto realizzato dal fotografo Bjarne Riesto per la splendida immagine di copertina.
Solitarie note acustiche convivono dunque con le iterazioni potenzialmente infinite di "Descent To The End", un piano minimale introduce il drone uniforme ma estremamente dinamico di "Nothing From No One", accordi dai sentori quasi mediterranei ed eterei rilanci armonici incorniciano le visioni cangianti di "No More Reasons Not To Fall" e "No One Will Ever Find You Here".
Nel corso dell'album, e in particolare nei due pezzi più lunghi ("To Finally Forget It All" e la conclusiva title track), Van Wey non manca di addentrarsi in abissi tenebrosi, che tuttavia ogni volta riesce ad arricchire di rara vitalità, piegandone l'immobile uniformità a derive cosmiche e persino a carezze sognanti, ovvero innestandovi un'incessante serie di aperture, pulsazioni e screziature che si muovono con destrezza tra le sinfoniedroniche di Basinski e l'universo sonoro dei Labradford.
Più riflessivo e meno pessimista di quanto il titolo lascerebbe presagire, attraverso i suoi tanti elementi e variazioni "The Art Of Dying Alone" riesce a travalicare l'apparente scoglio di una durata imponente, conferendo ampiezza di respiro a una tematica sempre esposta al rischio di una difficile comunicatività. E con ciò Van Wey conferma quanto di buono da ultimo mostrato nelle sue uscite dello scorso anno, accreditandosi come compositore ambientale credibile e dalla spiccata sensibilità, capace di riprodurre in musica i mille colori del ghiaccio e l'essenza di una solitudine incoercibile, in tutto e per tutto speculare a quella insita nella stessa natura umana. di Raffaello Russo

ONDAROCK

Seventh Review

NOWAMUZYKA

Eight Review

ambient 8.4 Bvdub es el seudónimo del músico Brock Van Wey originario de San Francisco. Ya tiene en su haber varios discos EPs y colaboraciones en varios recopilatorios, aparece por ejemplo en “Pop Ambient” [2010] el sampler de ambient del prestigiado sello alemán Kompact y que fuera una curaduría de Wolfgang Voigt (aka Gas).“The Art of Dying Alone”, incluso dentro del ambient, es un disco atmosférico y etéreo, con grandes pasajes de una quietud pasmosa. Esto es logrado con una combinación entre sonidos acústicos, generados por piano, guitarras, violines, coros de voces femeninas y esto es mezclado con bases delicadas de ambientes sonoros digitales. Brock Van Wey actualmente vive en Shaoxing, China desde donde compuso y conceptualizó esta nueva entrega. Un álbum muy hermoso que puede ser una referencia perfecta para escuchar lo que está haciendo la elite del ambient por estos días.

REGION CUARTO

Nineth Review

“Mike (Remote_) said to me once early on that this scene is a tough place for someone who wears their heart on their sleeve. He's right. I found that out the hard way long ago. But all you can do is continue on in the way you think is right, and hope that you make a positive mark on the world. Remaining personal will never be difficult for me, because it's all I know. And I wouldn't trade that for all the notoriety or success in the world”, these heartfelt words which epitomize the essence of music in our lives as a purveyor and dissolution of emotions and feelings which can’t be shaken off easily expressed the veneration of Brock Van Wey for the deeply personal music he was creating and appreciating in an interview for Resident Advisor. Brock Van Wey a.k.a. Bvdub has been creating quintessential, soul stirring, emotionally purging, haunting and lustrously tantalising music right from his techno releases (2008’s synth sybaritic No Turning Back EP being an example) to the last year’s phosphorescent glow of ‘White Cloud Drift On and On’ which combined the imputes of Gas, spirituality and African chants and flush-seamed it to create a feathery and fluffy texture that granted emotional comfort to the melancholia and pleasure that knew no bounds; it’s the sort of music where you can feel his heartbeat through the substance of it. ‘White clouds Drift On And On’, which was a reflection of the struggles he had with the rave scene that had got commercialised and that had been stripped off its purity right in front of his eyes and the consequent journey of leaving it all behind to lead a life of solitude in China and coming to terms with it all, had this quality of self redemption and exploration of pain and time as a healer. This ulterior motive is also the basis of this new overwhelming and compelling record ‘The Art Of Dying Alone’.

The record’s impressionistic qualities are emblazoned in the resplendent cover art which depicts a cosy wooden house besides a lake in a picturesque, cloudy and snow capped terrain. It signifies seclusion, but, in a positive way; its recuperation and revitalisation from the mental stress and trauma; to discover the beauty within and without and the divinity of nature and to divert ones mind towards more peaceful thoughts and ideas. When you lack any support and life gets at you in a really big way and abruptly halts the flow, after a period of mourning you reach a depressing state in which you think, now that you have already fallen to such a low level, you can’t fall below this one, it’s time to take control of the situation, accept the fate, work for a brighter future, the only direction to proceed towards is upwards now. But, when this happens you become a changed person and are weary of the things and people that made you unhappy; so, in a way you are back again in the company of people around you, but, there is a bigger purpose to enrich life and you are on your own for that – the purpose of getting back on feet, finding happiness in things that you love to do and having a strong foothold so that you don’t have to suffer again. The wounds have been healed but the scars remain and they efface only with death and therein comes ‘The Art Of Dying Alone’. This record exactly echoes such a feeling and as one progresses towards the end, there is a transition in the mood of the album from the melancholic album opener to the climaxing ‘No More Reasons No To Fall’ to the sorrowful album closer when the dust finally settles down (which is also clear from the name of the tracks such as ‘Descent To The End’, ‘Nothing From No One’, ‘No More Reasons To Not Fall’ and ‘No One Will Ever Find You Here’).

To portray the pain, the anger, the suffering, the sadness and the withering Brock uses a variety of instruments ranging from strings to pianos to acoustic guitars and intertwines them with guitar drones to create expansive sonic textures akin to that perfected by Marsen Jules and Brian Eno; very shoegaze like and unruffled. Seraphic voices grace with their presence in the plush, chilly, dense, windy and desolate settings and add to the instrumental rumination. Beginning this journey of self deprivation, deprecation and salvation, ‘Descent To The End’ represents a devastated and pessimistic outlook; the sudden surge of feelings and emotions are entrapped in the looped, elegiac, surging and billowing drones; the trudging and heavy handed guitar strums that are exhausted and overcome by this surge are introduced as they diffuse a portentous tension into the protracted, layered, distant sounding and buried guitar drones that furl and unfurl in the almost cyclonic environs of the track. ‘Nothing From No One’ submerges oneself in an abandoned utopia; voiceless field recordings (probably from a small cafeteria or a kitchen) merge into genteel piano chimes that get stuck in an endless loop as if one is stuck in a moment, unable to comprehend and thoroughly analyze and inert to the purlieu; the opulent, stunning and luxe somniferous drones interlaced by the drawn out soaring husky voices are the only rescuers from this baffling emptiness and distraught. Hinting that the distended paranoia is phasing out, the twenty one minute long track ‘To Finally Forget It All’, provides a slightly consoling atmosphere of faraway crackling noises and echoing synths; warm pulsating guitar chords and throbbing sub-bass slowly dissolve the unease in the jetting heavenly and aeriform voices that are looped and textured to create a soundscape reminiscent of Brian Eno’s ‘Music For Airports’. Bursting with joy and exuding unwound bliss, ‘No More Reasons Not To Fall’, is a sign of reverting the path of self-depreciation; the gladdened, anodyne and mellisonant female vocals that playfully sing ‘Na na na...’ in tune with the gorgeously constructed sonic terrain of bubbling, rollicking and shimmering guitar chords, the occasional snipped tide of harmonious violins and the upsurge of shuffled piano notes strengthens and invigorates the soul. At around the fifth minute, the same heaven embracing guitar drones arrive to paint the ambiance in spotless white and elevate the listener amongst the cotton like clouds and the birds. ‘No One Will Ever find You Here’ with the looped breathy female vocals, sombre guitar chords and the whitewashed ambiance is the realisation that one is still alone in this struggle and harbours feelings of doubt and insecurity and fear of the demise of the dreams. Welcoming the listener to the heavenly abode for the final time, in the album closer ‘The Art Of Dying Alone’, death the great leveller heals all the scars and puts to rest any emotional and physical conflicts and doubts in the with-time healing mid-pitch female vocals and alien looped intonations, the lugubrious pads, string arrangements and guitar chords and the engulfing gargantuan drones. All the tracks fit so well in this jig-saw puzzle it is hard to imagine the tracks without this fluidity and contagious congruity to be moved apart.

‘The Art Of Dying Alone’ befittingly captures a muse that Brock is devoted to – his life and his struggles; things that build and strengthen him. His experiences are encapsulated and in these tracks as he tries to deftly send the message across. Stylistically it is closer to the work done by Slowdive drummer Simon Scott and Tim Hecker; the personal touch, the small details and his musical prowess enhance the listening experience. This is a record that you may not only be smitten because of the ambiance but also the emotional weight attached to it; a recommended and a well executed record.

Rating : 9/10

INDIEBANDWAGON.BLOGSPOT

It should be noted, just in case, that marine discs, trembling and more fragile than fine china, can also work without the involuntary help of Justin Bieber, if need be.  A long time ago, Brock Van Wey shook off the obsession with sounding like a diligent student of Basic Channel and ordered the hype, with very good reason, to go to hell.  Since then, everything that he publishes (on his label, Quietus, and on others like Echospace [Detroit] and now on a small Italian label) sounds like an excess of clouds, like the flow of streams, like nirvana as it’s drawn for us by the mystics: that infinite peace and softness, the massage with an ending (not happy, mind you, but sublime apotheosis).  Aware that this has come off sounding like proselytizing from the Age of Aquarius, it should be noted that "The Art Of Dying Alone" is not intended to convey comfort, but the morbid side of rest, when a leg stretches and becomes worm feed. Something traumatic must have happened to Bvdub to record an album that Acheron would listen to if, while on the boat crossing the River Styx, there was a parrot; and despite some moments when there is more guitar and piano, the result is one of those eerily ambient albums that erase any sense of the passing of time.

PLAYGROUND MAGAZINE

Eleventh Review

Giunta alla sua ottava uscita, la romana Glacial Movements conferma di essere una delle etichette ambient migliori sulla scena mondiale.
Nel corso dei suoi quattro anni di vita il produttore e musicista Alessandro “Netherworld” Tedeschi ha saputo intessere una trama di contatti con i più interessanti produttori di musica elettronica ambient mondiali dal romano Oophoi all’inglese Rapoon, dal geniaccio Mick Harris ed il suo progetto Lull allo spagnolo Francisco Lopez, dal giovane trio svedese Skare al veterano tedesco Thomas Koner prossimamente in uscita.
Dosando al meglio melodia e isolazionismo, la label si è ritagliata una considerevole attenzione della scena mondiale e questo nuovo splendido cd lo dimostra ampiamente. Il lavoro è firmato da BVDUB ovvero Brock Van Wey, musicista che si muove da anni fra techno dub (su etichette come Styrax e Million of Moments) e ambient pura. Svincolandosi da ogni forma di ritmo, la sua musica stavolta appare veramente libera di girare fra le sue amate nuvole (spesso presenti nelle sue copertine o nei video della sua musica). Ne vengono fuori sei brani magici che esplorano in tutte le sue sfaccettature il confine sottile fra melodia e drones ipnotici, mescolando mirabilmente suoni acustici, digitali, analogici e sample vocali e suonando come una ipotetica session fra Lyle Mays e Seefeel.
Da non perdere. by Andrea Benedetti

ELECTRONIQUE

Twelve Review

Devotees of Brock Van Wey's recent output under his own name and his Bvdub alias—the double-disc opus White Clouds Drift On and On and We Were The Sun, issued on Stephen Hitchell's Echospace and Van Wey's own Quietus imprints, respectively—will find themselves swooning once again while listening to The Art of Dying Alone. The nearly eighty-minute collection must be considered a coup of sorts for the Glacial Movements label, given the rapturous response Van Wey's work has generated recently (that rise in profile exemplified by his inclusion on the 2010 edition of Kompakt's Pop Ambient series). Written and produced in Shaoxing, China, the new release doesn't depart dramatically from the style of its precursors, but that's no cause for complaint. Don't be thrown by the resigned tone of titles such as “To Finally Forget It All” and “The Art of Dying Alone” either; what Van Wey's conjured here are six ethereal soundscapes of epic grandeur.

So how's it sound? After an arresting piano introduction, “Nothing From No One” blossoms into a dense droning blur of piano, electronics, and voices. Powered by hypnotic loops of vocals, acoustic guitars, and strings so oceanic one could drown in them, “No More Reasons Not To Fall” and “No One Will Ever Find You Here” are so close in spirit to the Pop Ambient prototype, it's no surprise Van Wey was asked to contribute to the recent collection. A bouyant mid-tempo techno pulse lends “To Finally Forget It All” a levity and animation that nicely complements the silken unfurl of voices and synthetic washes thatswirl so seductively around it for twenty-one minutes. Even so, the album's loveliest piece is the becalmed title track, which ends the album with nineteen ravishing minutes of supplicating female vocalizing, choir exhalations, and harp-like string patterns.

With no details about instruments listed in the credits, one makes an educated guess about the tracks' specific sound sources; at the very least, one can report that piano, acoustic guitar, strings, and angelic female voices figure prominently, and that all such sounds are blended into tantalizing clouds of ambient design. The label name Glacial Movements might suggest icy chill and isolationism but The Art of Dying Alone exudes an alluring warmth that's anything but alienating. It's another beautiful addition to Van Wey's stellar discography. September 2010

TEXTURA

Thirteen Review

ROCKERILLA (September 2010)

Fourteen Review

 

Fifteen Review

Brock van Wey (gewoon een Amerikaan) heeft allang de dubtechno achter zich gelaten en verdiept zich tegenwoordig in ambient, geheel in lijn met grootmeester Gas (Wolfgang Voigt), Kompakt labelgenoot Kaito en de IJslander Yagya. De voorganger ‘White Clouds Drift On And On’ was doorspekt met de Pop Ambient-sound van Kompakt. Luchtige soundscapes voor groene theedrinkers en wierookstokers met vast een paar wandelsandalen in de kast. Maar eerlijk is eerlijk, Bvdub schept uitgestrekte geluidslandschappen waar de soundscapes stromen als rivieren onder een strakblauwe hemellucht, ver verwijderd van futiliteiten als ongenoegen en negativiteit. Dit ondanks de somber gehete nummers als ‘I Knew Happiness Once’. Op ‘The Art Of Dying Alone’ gaat Bvdub op dezelfde voet verder en bestaat de droom van Wey uit zes uitgesponnen nummers waar langgerekte soundscapes, akoestisch instrumenten en echoënde vocalen wederom het verhaal vertellen van een utopische wereld die alleen bestaat in het hoofd van Bvdub. Ook hier beloven de titels op de hoes naderend onheil en tegenspoed, en heeft het geluid een verdrietige ondertoon, maar blijft het allemaal lief en mooi, als de soundtrack van een onbestaande film. Wie geen licht gitaargetokkel in zijn ambient belieft, moet niets hebben van 'The Art Of Dying Alone'. Wie zoekt naar schoonheid zonder drone en venijn, is hier juist. We schenken ondertussen nog een kop groene thee in, dat smaakt zo slecht nog niet

GONZO CIRCUS

Sixteen Review

Auch die achte Veröffentlichung aus dem Hause Glacial Movements ist in einem sehr kühl und schön gestalteten Digipak erschienen. Das Cover des Albums „The Art of Dying Alone“ des mir bisher unbekannten Projekts BVDUB wird von einer verschneiten Strandlandschaft geziert, in der eine einsame Hütte auszumachen ist. Zwar ist auch dieses Album fast völlig instrumental gehalten, doch bereits im ersten der insgesamt sechs Titel, wird deutlich, dass trotz der weiterhin kalten, und scheinbar trostlosen Thematik der Sound irgendwie wärmer, weil etwas organischer ist, als man es bei „cold ambient“ gemeinhin erwartet. „Descent To The End“ überrascht und gefällt mir wegen der Drones und einer feine Melodieführung, wobei das Repetitive durchaus strukturbildend ist. Das zweite Stück beginnt mit Pianoklängen, die langsam zu einem Loop werden, hinter dem sich helle, aber weiterhin gar nicht zu kalte, Klangflächen entwickeln, die zunehmend in den Vordergrund ’strahlen’, gegen Ende indes wieder verschwinden: Das zarte Piano bleibt. Auch das über zwanzigminütige „To Finally Forget It All“ verbindet leise Pianoklänge mit mal mehr akustisch, mal mehr elektronisch klingenden Soundscapes, wobei der hier vorhandene Rhythmus jenes Stückes geradezu in eine Trancerichtung schweben lässt. Im weiteren Verlauf wird eine Atmosphäre hörbar, die dann gar nicht mal so weit von BOARDS OF CANADA weg ist, und man vermeint, synthetische bzw. bis ins Sphärische modulierte Stimmen zu hören, was den Hörgenuss natürlich in keiner Weise trübt. Selbst Vergleiche zu der meditativen Stimmung, die etwa bei THE THRESHOLD HOUSEBOYS CHOIR auftauchen kann, erscheinen mir nicht zu weit hergeholt, denn auch bei Titeln wie „No One Will Ever You Here“ sind es eben nicht nur ausladende Klangflächen, sondern melodische Loops und eine gewisse Rhythmik, die dieses Album zu mehr als nur ruhiger und angenehmer Hintergrundmusik machen. Und beim letzten Stück, dem Titeltrack, muss man wirklich davon ausgehen, dass man eine geradezu engelshafte Frauenstimme hört, die Klänge werden immer ätherischer und man kann meinen, dass wer hier der Kunst des „Dying Alone“ frönt, gewiss in den Himmel kommt. Dabei klingt das, was BVDUB hier an Ambient erklingen lässt, alles andere als kitschig, sondern wirklich gut. Testen! (flake777)

BLACK MAGAZINE

Seventeen Review

In the anonymous world of ambient, bvdub aka Brock Van Wey has developed an actual physical existence over the past few years. It’s hardly a cult of personality, but it’s relatively easy to find interviews with him and discover the back-story for an obviously interesting character: to be brutally reductive, San Francisco DJ becomes disillusioned with “the scene”, sells his record collection, moves to China, comes back, and starts to make music.

He’s prolific as well. The Art Of Dying Alone is (at least) his fifteenth release in four years and it continues a developing formula. Saturnine, predominantly beatless tracks of epic length are built into swirling crescendos from layered and looped fragments of strings, vocals, piano and acoustic guitar. It’s sonically consistent, but not identically so - To Finally Forget It All plays with things a little, introducing some clicky, languid percussion half way through, which after ten-plus minutes burrowing into your brain starts to sound like a cabasa, if one was strapped to a sloth. And the title track leads with less processed mantra-like vocals, reminiscent of overblown sci-fi theme music.

One of the points Van Wey makes regularly is that the “dub” in “bvdub” has nothing to do with dub techno. However, The Art Of Dying Alone swims in reverb (boom, there’s the “dub as FX” trope) and you can hear the light-and-shade genre aesthetic in the shimmering fabric of the first two tracks Descent To The End and Nothing From No One. I suppose the argument is that dub techno has no monopoly on mining melancholia from repetition, but it seems a little specious to deny it so vehemently. Perhaps a more apposite dub comparison is the dub remix - if brainy, mathy pop acts like The Books or Cornelius commissioned mammoth extended remixes they might sound something like this.

This melodic pop sensibility means that in common with much ambient soundscaping, almost anyone would find The Art Of Dying Alone a remarkably pleasant superficial listen - notwithstanding the track titles, which are almost comically emo to a cynical British ear. Maybe the album could unspool through an open window as you daydream and watch clouds from a deckchair, or it could soundtrack a humdrum hour sat at a desk. But if you take the album full-on in the spirit that is presumably intended, it’s a deeply and occasionally wonderfully emotional experience - when the album highlight No More Reasons Not To Fail peaked about nine minutes in it’s only a minor over-exaggeration to say my heart nearly staved in and I felt I never needed to listen to anything else ever again. In all honesty though, this level of investment is hard to give, because sustaining it for nearly 80 minutes is exhausting and the eventual pay-off is probably nothing more than a mild and lingering depression. But then I wouldn’t know that for sure; I couldn’t manage it.

As a result, I still prefer last year’s To Live on Smallfish, which made a similar impact but in a smaller form factor. The Art Of Dying Alone is a great album and a worthy addition to a distinct and fascinating body of work, but you may end up wishing for something a little less, dare I say it, anonymous. Sam Stagg
 

BLEEP 43

Eighteen Review

The discography of Brock Van Wey (aka Bvdub) is simply impressive. "The Art Of Dying Alone" is his first appearance on the Italian label Glacial Movements, which will for sure increase his popularity in other ambient fields. The ambient style of Bvdub isn't so cold as the title of this album may appear. This American musician went to China (Shaoxing) to compose this album. Inspired by the strength and magic of nature, he created an endless sensation of ambient music. The music sounds like a wafting on a breeze, like a feather in the wind. A kind of mystic trip throughout imaginary evasive fields leaves the listener in state of serenity. This music is the perfect medicine to cool down after a hard day of labour. A few bleeps have been added here and than while shimmering voices are sometimes like emerging from nowhere. Bvdub brings a sonic picture with a quite diversified canvas reaching a climax on "To Finally Forget It All" that will hold you in its grip for more than 21 minutes! An intriguing ambient release! (DP:7)DP.

SIDE LINE

Nineteen Review

A veces hay pequeños detalles, sin mucha explicación y más allá de lo racional, que distinguen de sus pares a los artistas que hacen un tipo particular de música. Al parecer es el caso de Brock Van Wey, alias bvdub. El prolífico y misterioso productor comenzó en el dub tecno, pero en cada nuevo trabajo fue encariñándose más con lo atmosférico y etéreo de su sonido. The Art of Dying Alone (título que define a la perfección su postura creativa) es el epítome de sus búsquedas ambientales: una fórmula que varios exponentes actuales adoptan, aunque Van Wey la lleva a niveles de emoción y sentimiento difíciles de describir. Es delicado, desolador y melancólico con un talento innato. Pero, en toda esa oscuridad aparente, un rayo de luz parece tocar la fibra sensible, ésa que activa en nuestra alma esa sonrisa interna que sólo la música puede dibujar. Gabriel Reyes

EXTRAVAGANZA (CL)
 

Twenty Review

Twenty-one Review

 

BRAINWASHED

Twenty-two Review

Nouveau pensionnaire du label Glacial Movements, BVDUB manipule sons virtuels, voix féminines et guitares acoustiques avec un sens illustratif particulièrement marqué. Discret transfuge de la scène "deep techno", ce musicien de San Francisco se distingue par ses compositions planantes et froides élaborées sur des trames mélancoliques et mystérieuses. Un examen approfondi de ce travail révèle qu'il s’appuie sur un large faisceau de boucles minimales se transformant, peu à peu, en textures denses. Ainsi, différentes couches sonores interagissent délicatement pour procurer à l'auditeur un calme intérieur assurément bénéfique.

SOLENOPOLE

Twenty-three Review

RITUAL (October-Nov 2010)

Twenty-four Review

Chroniques Electroniques    

Twenty-five review

Parfois, l'esthétique de la pochette d'un disque ne colle pas avec la musique qu'il renferme. Ici ce n'est pas le cas. Cette très belle photographie qui peut évoquer la nature, la solitude ou la liberté par exemple, trouve son parfait écho dans la musique de The Art of Dying Alone.Six morceaux composent ce délicat album. Ces longues plages musicales (de 8 à 21 minutes), prennent leur temps et nous invitent à faire de même. Les nappes sonores se superposent, se relaient, douces et aériennes, relaxantes (pour ne pas dire régénératrices !). Le son d'un piano se mêle à d'autres sons plus synthétiques. Les mélodies sont élégantes et discrètes, lointaines ; des notes nostalgiques qui nous offrent une halte dans ces immensités glacées.

LAMENGEDISQUE

Twenty-six review

 

 ADEQUACY

Twenty-seven Review

(December 2010) Devotees of Brock Van Wey's recent output under his own name and his bvdub alias may ready themselves for swooning again. Followers of the sonic aesthetic established by Alessandro Tedeschi, Glacial Movements' prime mover, however, should prepare for disappointment. In the artist's discography, this new release departs little from immediate precursors, but in terms of the label's in-house style, it is notably, jarringly, incongruent. The Art of Dying Alone may be a meditation on a theme of isolation and existential angst, but it is far removed from the intensity of GM's back catalogue of long dark stares into the void from Netherworld, Rapoon, Lull, Francisco Lòpez, or the desolate dream projections of Skare, Oophoi, and Aquadorsa.

So, what's with this GM modified food?

Van Wey propounds a proven, admittedly popular, formula. Predominantly beatless tracks consisting of recursive delicate motifs, lilting chord progressions build to soft climax in surges of layered and looped fragments: strings, vocals, piano, acoustic guitar, and ethereal femme vox cohere and cluster in a cumulative swirl; prevailing outlook light and fluffy, with dark-edged clouds forming (don't fret, they'll soon clear); track titles almost parodically emo: "No More Reasons Not to Fall," "I Knew Happiness Once." So it goes. The Man from California brings with him an overegged pudding of a style, not so much Ambient as Emo-bient; unkind perhaps but apt in tagging van Wey's prevailing mope-binge tendencies, last sighted on White Clouds Drift On And On, a work whose release was attended by reflections on a recent past of personal existential crisis , disillusion and withdrawal, solitude and eventual resurgence. Presumably it's these themes still being pored over here - the artist in prolonged meditations on issues of Self-in-the-world, etc. This would attribute meaning to these minimal loop strands, threading into denser textures, soft pads, twinkling cadences and chorales in endless waves, till motion turns to still. He has spoken elsewhere (ref RA interview) of imagined utopias, so these may be what the bvdub vocabulary - much of it acquired from Kompakt's original contributors, Voigt, Guentner, Lohmann, Dettinger - is seeking to voice with its dully articulate lulling pianos, fluffy cloud synths, tastefully plucked guitars, and celestial warbling in excelsis.

So what's the fly in the ointment of paradise? Those titles ("Wish I Was Here"?) should already have alarm bells ringing, even before the music starts. The appeal of the elegiac, the downturned, in music is undeniable, but van Wey's miserabilist progressions present themselves self-consciously boo-hoo, doe-eyed cutely forlorn, like he put the Bambi in Ambient; any tension is rendered limp by foreshadowing of a facile resolution, doubtless some sort of signifier of a will-to-'closure' (the Californian may have got out of California, but not vice versa), every sad cadence trailing a tinkling harp to dispel any threat of desolation.

So, The Art of Dying Alone sits conspicuously in the GM stable, given its prior record of more mediated forms of isolationist expression. Cloying and lachrymose inclinations leave the listener uneasily queasily a-swim; an Ocean of Sound, perhaps, but one whose main constituents are syrup and tears. Sonically, some have seen it as sailing close to a series of go-to referents (bring out your Eno, Gas, Marsen Jules, Tim Hecker, Simon Scott et al.). True, the likes of "No More Reasons Not To Fall" and "No One Will Ever Find You Here" are replete with crowd-pleasing Pop Ambient tropes. But it's the distinctive features of the above, rather than commonalities, that are central. This is unique to each, and, crucially, what makes bvdub bvdubby is a wilting anodyne mawkish sprawl, whose parts, summed, amount to no transportive whole. Its effect - and affect - may be recognisable, but hard to feel. For, at best, say on "To Finally Forget it all," the indulgences of the flat-on-back languish or maudlin mope are tarnished by enervation, by a sense of being carried along by drip-dry drones and hand-me-down tones on some kind of candy floss-draped couch to a slowed down trance-tune with the limp 4-to-the-floor kick of a fainting heartbeat. And, what's more, this final drawn out infinitude of silken swirl comes on top of a preceding hour-long unfurl. And finally, the emotional investment required if The Art? is bought into has as pay-off a state of melanch-oholic stupor.

If that's what you want, seduction is simple, as a slew of reviews will attest . But you won't find alluring and idiosyncratic sound exploration here, and Glacial Movements' conversion to the wan whey that is the One Way of van Wey is, frankly, perplexing.

IGLOO MAGAZINE
 

Twenty-eight Review

 

CYCLIC DEFROST

Twenty-nine Review

Depuis l’isolationnisme dont il a fait son but d’exploration, Alessandro Tedeschi élargit peu à peu l’angle de son label Glacial Movements. Le pôle certes, et le froid, mais plus uniquement les textures ambiantes de Lull, Netherworld, López, Rapoon… Avec le Aqua Dorsa d’Enrico Coniglio et Oophoi, la rutilance du chrome et du clic avait déjà colonisé la glace. C’est chose répétée chez BVdub, alias de Brock van Wey, repéré sur Kompakt, le label de Gas. Comme Gas / W. Voigt, BVdub joint au froid du vent et de la banquise, celui des circuits et des cordes mises en boucles. L’ordinateur revendique son silicium, ses angles et sa digestion de l’acoustique. Après tout, le pôle est un lieu d’absolu, et il devient vite un absolu en soi, une image, un but et, en tant que tel, multiplie les chemins et les méthodes pour l’atteindre. Dans la musique de BVdub, c’est le passage de la grâce allongée à la boucle qui semble figurer cet état et son accomplissement ; le passage du drone à fredonner dans la plus pure essence mélancolique du paradoxal dark ambient éclairé, jusqu’à la fermeture d’une séquence sur elle-même. Pour cela BVdub choisit le geste acoustique, aux couleurs d’Eno, comme ce piano qui se déploie dans son aube, révèle des nuances saturées de jaune pâle comme les pétales s’ouvrant insensiblement dans le printemps nimbé de rosée. Une fois capturée, la beauté se love dans son cercle, que l’informatique répète à l’envi, soutenue par de discrets inserts rythmiques, rejoignant la légère mécanique de Gas dans ces moments. L’art de mourir, forcément seul, mais en tout cas de savoir mourir c’est, dit-on, le but de toute philosophie. Il me semble que la musique et de tels instants de poésie sans mots, peuvent y apporter un indéniable secours, voire y suppléer.

FEAR DROP

Thirty Review

Here’s a true story. One morning I woke up between the two worlds – the one created by my mind, and the one perceived by it. With the remaining bits of dreams still lingering in my peripheral consciousness, I set off to the start of a new day. But the dreams kept coming back. In particular, an image of a needle playing on a dusty record, evoking two words spoken by that 60s radio jockey, repeated over and over in one continuous loop. The same two words appeared on the DJ’s t-shirt – one on the front, the other on the back. Those two words were “dying” and “alone”. That dream stayed with me for weeks, sending chills down my spine upon every recollection. Unable to interpret its meaning, I shelved it for another time. A month later, I have discovered bvdub‘s latest album. Have I seen this title somewhere else before? Perhaps. That doesn’t change a thing…

There’s something about Brock Van Wey‘s music that makes me connect to nature, to consciousness, to being, through sound alone… Brock serves the highest sermon to all the listening gods in my church of music. The repetitive passages of sound create a blissful mantra, imploring you to erase all thought, forget about the past or future, and just stay in the present. The titles of the tracks, give me even more reason to believe that Brock’s message is indeed reflective on the nature of our short stay in this world: “Descent to the End”, “To Finally Forget It All”, and “No One Will Ever Find You Here”. The release includes the following message: “We all die alone, but some make it their last work of art.”

Released on an Italian ambient label, Glacial Movements Records, the album was written and produced by Brock in Shaoxing, China, where he currently resides. On his last album, White Clouds Drift On And On (echospace [detroit], 2009) released under his real name, Brock Van Wey paired with Stephen Hitchell to release a double disk full of deepest dub and emotionally absorbing music. On The Art Of Dying Alone, Brock returns with ethereal atmospheric pads, seamless loops over frequency saturated sonic soundscapes, with distant and delicate voices, gentle piano, and acoustic guitar. At the center of the album is a theme of contemplation on life, isolation, detachment, and inevitably, death.

Be sure to pick up bvdub’s We Were The Sun releases on his own, Quietus Recordings. I also recommend you grab the single track release, To Live, released by Smallfish in 2009. Additionally, I am looking forward to bvdub’s upcoming release on Home Normal, titled Tribes at the Temple of Silence, scheduled to hit the streets in January 2011. The album features a track titled “These Walls Will Always Remember (for Dani)”, which I’m sure is dedicated in memory of Danielle Baquet-Long (Celer / Chubby Wolf), who passed away in the summer of 2009 at the young age of 26. With all of this reflection on death, I must end this review, and set about my day, attempting to accomplish even the smallest tasks with full devotion, hoping that my presence would leave a tiny trace of my existence behind, when I’m ready to go…

HEADPHONE COMMUTE
 

Thirty-one Review

Ouuuuuuh... L’œuvre de Brock Van Wey, qui travaille depuis Shaoxing, en Chine. De l’électronique ambiante avec une très légère tendance expérimentale (quelques textures plus grattantes). Mais splendidement fait, avec de belles voix féminines en fond. De longues pièces méditatives - économes dans les arrangements, mais très efficaces. Charmant.
Oooooh... The work of one Brock Van Wey, working out of Shaoxing, China. Ambient electronica with a very light experimental tendency (some grittier textures). Gorgeously executed, with fine female vocals in places. Long meditative tracks - sparse yet efficient arrangements.

MONSIEUR D'ELIRE
 

Thirty-two Review

SELF TITLED MAGAZINE

Thirty-three Review

Thirty-four Review

BACKER & TAYLOR
 

Thirty-six Review

Art loves desolation, and ever since the Romantics made us visit the wild wood and read it as morally superior to the city, that's where we look for inspiration and perhaps relaxation. Composed by Brock Van Wey (sounds Dutch), recorded in China, and released in Italy, this multi-national project forms a calm, clear environment, the sort of place you might imagine on a pristine Greenland plateau or in an anechoic woodland. Dream trance sounds hypnotically seduce you, reducing your iPhone and Franklin Day Planner to unneeded abstractions. You know you should be somewhere -- a sales meeting in Boise, performance review training in Baltimore, perhaps solving technical problems at the Helsinki call center, but you just can't get up the gumption. Bvdub is Valium for the soul, Control-Alt-Delete for the body, an audio cleansing for your karma. This might all be incoherent rambling, but it's a very pleasant incoherence, and I would be very happy if you were here right now. I'll get the hot stones for the massage, you realign the Feng Shui crystals. But since you couldn't be on this astral plane, I'll leave you with a deep, friendly "aum... ."

Feel the silence. Feels good, doesn't it?  - Carl F Gauze -

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