Twenty-two Review

BACKROADS MUSIC

Twenty-three Review

mal lieber gleich am anfang: irgendwo habe ich gelesen, das wäre eine cd-r; sieht für mich aber dann doch eher wie eine "echte" aus.........
und noch etwas: "glazial", "isolation" etc.; diese begriffe im zusammenhang mit ambient werden doch seit über einem jahrzehnt (oder sogar mehr) herbeizitiert wenn es gilt, (tatsächlich oder scheinbar) besonders abweisend und kalt wirkenden oder auch nur besonders minimalistischen ambient zu beschreiben. thomas köner kann da ein lied von singen, wenngleich er sicherlich einer derjenigen ist, die eine solche art des ambient überhaupt erst entwickelt haben; remember "nunatak gongamur" oder "nuuk",.....damals.

hier dann also eine 2006er version dieser haltung, zusammengestellt von oophoi aus italien. und ohne jetzt alle namen zu droppen, sind es northaunt (behauptet, keine gitarren genutzt zu haben und klingt geradezu verteufelt genau danach) und netherworld, die die thematik hier fast am stärksten packen. troum dagegen verlassen die kalten winde der oberfläche und erforschen morlocks in den weiten hallräumen der unterirdischen eishöhle; aidan baker, ebenfalls "beneath the ice", jedoch wohl weiter südlich, da seine typisch warmen multilayergitarren die isolation der kälte trefflich abhalten, fast schon "thema verfehlt". der höhepunkt für mich dann tho-so-aa mit seinem stück "cryotesk" (ja, die beiträge nehmen die themenstellung bis ins detail ernst); und er zitiert den ursprung (hier: thomas köner) in seinen subflächen schon sehr stark, kann aber durch eine art rhythmisches signal in der abweisenden wildnis geschickt am plagiat vorbeisteuern.
insgesamt also alles nicht wirklich neu, aber trotzdem unterhaltsam.

UNRUHR MAGAZINE

Twenty-four Review

Musica ambient isolazionista, nello stile di Thomas Koner, Lull e Lustmord, questo negli intenti dichiarati dallo stesso Netherworld, producer romano, fondatore dell'etichetta Glacial Movements, al debutto con una prima compilation, 'Cryosphere', programmatico manifesto di sonorità minimali, algide e dilatate. Sono nove i differenti artisti coinvolti, altrettante le tracce in sequenza, a partire da 'Pulse Of Iceland' di Closing The Eternity, fino a 'Cold Sun' di Oophoi, passando per Troum ed Aidan Baker fra gli altri in elenco. Droni, field recording, manipolazioni digitali ad evocare paesaggi rarefatti, visioni gelide di luoghi solo apparentemente inabitabili. Esplorazioni certo non convenzionali ma che in fondo non richiedono poi una conoscenza così specialistica per essere apprezzate nell'essenza di suoni e poetiche immediatamente decifrabili e di gran qualità.

NEURAL

Twenty-five Review

MUSIC ALUTIS

Twenty-six Review

ALTERNATIVE POP

Twenty-seven Review

"CLOSING THE ETERNITY send back out the surrender-site of the living body junk feeling replicant where turned on the ill-treatment of a chemical anthropoid to the insanity medium of the hyperreal HIV scanners DNA channel of the corpse city era respiration-byte. The abolition world-codemaniacs that was processed to the corpse feti streaming circuits of the biocapturism nerve cells that compressed the acidHUMANIX infectious disease of a clone boy data mutant of NORTHAUNT's ultra machinery tragedy-ROM creature system mass of flesh-module. Abnormal living body of trash sense of drug fetus to the reptilian HUB modem heart that hung up THO-SO-AA control the paradise apparatus of the human body pill cruel emulator murder-gimmick of the soul/gram made of retro-ADAM. AcidHUMANIX infectious disease archive of the biocapturism nerve cells to the feeling replicant living body junk of LIGHTWAVE's digital vamp cold-blooded disease animals nightmare-script of a clone boy is accelerated the virus. The paradise apparatus of the human body pill cruel emulator corpse feti streaming of the soul/gram made of retro-ADAM TUU's reptilian HUB modem that crashed a chemical anthropoid cardiac covered to that mass of flesh-module hunting for the grotesque WEB=joints. TROUM aspirate the abolition world-codemaniacs of the terror fear cytoplasm that was send back out to the brain universe of the hyperreal HIV scanner form murder game of the dogs of tera technojunkies' era respiration-byte to a hybrid corpse mechanism acid. Brain universe that was processed to the DNA channels of the biocapturism nerve cells corpse feti streaming of a clone boy data mutant of AIDAN BAKER's abolition world-codemaniacs feeling replicant is output. NETHERWORLD's modem heart of the hybrid corpse mechanism that turned on technojunkies' ill-treatment to the paradise apparatus of the human body pill cruel emulator that compressed the acidHUMANIX infectious disease of the soul/gram made of retro-ADAM gene-dub. OÖPHOI's murder game to the insanity medium of the hyperreal HIV scanners that chemical anthropoid was send back out the mass of flesh-module of the ultra machinery tragedy-ROM creature system that was exterminated the era respiration-byte of the corpse city."

KENJI SIRATORI

Twenty-eight Review

As we all know, a glacier is a huge formation of ice which moves very, very slowly - global warming notwithstanding. "Arctic ambient" is a genre that has its roots in (primarily but far from solely) Norwegian ambient of the late nineties and the specific musicians first heaving into sight at that time, with Thomas Köner from Germany and Norwegian Biosphere head and shoulders above the rest. The label Beatservice championed the genre from an early stage and provided it with numerous showcases before edging over into more dance-oriented electronics.

The metaphors describing the feel evoked by successful purveyors of the genre are well-known and well-worn by now: Icy landscapes, the dark standstill of the winter solstice (far more often than the relentless daytime of the same region´s midnight sun), naught but silence save for the shifting of the very landscape itself; all is peaceful and primeaval and minimalistic.

Glacial Movements is a new Italian label intent on shouldering the mantle of protecting Arctic ambient and providing it with a healthy and thriving sanctuary. Cryosphere is its first, limited edition showcase, judiciously combining veteran and newcomer into a frosty, seamless whole. Label founder Netherworld has invited some of his favourite artists to help delineate the outlines of this world.

With a name quite unbefitting the opening of a collection, Closing The Eternity (fittingly based, however, in Siberia) start things off with a thousand tiny bells echoing over the lifeless expanse. Northaunt, on the other hand, sound as if they spent their six minutes below the tree line, high atop a soughing coniferous forest whipped by freezing winds.

With the constant beeping of what could be imagined to be a sped-up radar, Tho-So-Aa´s "Cryotesk" gives the impression of tracking something. Or, more ominously, of being tracked. Lightwave´s entry is more immersive, delving deep down into the still waters far below the meters of thick opaque ice. The steady aesthetic and skill of old ambient hand Tuu perversely supplies the warmest track on Cryosphere, with some seven minutes of shifting minimalism entitled "Silent Writing", while another veteran, Troum, truly emulates the sound of glacial movement with the very "concrete-feeling" "Glascei", creaking and groaning across the landscape in a manner most reminiscent of the classic Isolationism (Lustmord, Robert Rich et. al.) that first calved this genre.

Aidan Baker offers a work of great beauty, like some organ playing in a distant cathedral of ice, though it was created using Baker´s stock-in-trade electric guitar and digital four-track. His droneworld is a truly remarkable one, as much of his prolific production has already revealed. Netherworld´s own contribution, "Kryos", is a super-minimal soundscape constructed from field recordings, "old gates", synthesizers and samples. Finally, Oophoi (who usually places an umlaut over the second "o", and has also mastered this fellow Italian´s compilation), a recognized master of minimal ambient both warm and cold, ends our excursion on a lonesome, sorrowful note.

As with all really well-curated compilations, the whole is greater than its constituent parts. Immaculately woven together over almost the full eighty minutes a CD can contain, Cryosphere bodes well for the future of Arctic soundscaping.


Posted by Stephen Fruitman at 08:09, 18 Jan 2007

SONOMU

Twenty-nine Review

BLACK MAGAZINE

Thirty Review

Interessante compilation edita dalla Glacial Movements, nuova realtà nostrana votata alla celebrazione e alla rappresentazione musicale del grande Nord. Una label "a tema", quindi, che ha chiesto a ciascuno degli artisti coinvolti di rappresentare, attraverso le propria forma espressiva, una personale "visione" della criosfera, quella parte della superficie terrestre costantemente ricoperta dai ghiacci.
Il compito sarà apparso sicuramente semplice agli abili Northaunt, che sin dal loro stupendo esordio "The Ominous Silence" celebrano la magnificenza della natura norvegese. Il loro brano è molto vicino al maturo stile dell'ultimo "Horizons" e si dipana attraverso delicatissimi drones che tendono via via a sovrapporsi, mescolandosi in un'unica fluida traccia.
Più scure le tinte adoperate da Troum - duo tedesco noto per il suo singolare impiego nell'elettronica di varie tipologie di strumenti acustici - e da Tho-so-aa che, attraverso le oppressive atmosfere della sua "Cryotesk", realizza uno dei capitoli più incisivi di questa raccolta.
Il field recording e un originale impiego delle chitarre, oltre a svolgere un ruolo centrale nella registrazione dei sopraccitati Troum, caratterizzano in maniera determinante anche il pezzo del prolifico sperimentatore canadese Aidan Baker, e la traccia di Netherworld, "Cryos", sorprendentemente in bilico fra la classica dark ambient di stampo svedese e una ricerca elettronica tutta personale.
"Cryosphere" inaugura il catalogo di questa etichetta nel migliore dei modi, attraverso una raccolta di grande spessore e realmente coinvolgente.

MUSIC BOOM

Thirty-one Review

" Collecting nine international artists/groups, this album presents “a musical journey that transports the listener into glacial and unexplored lands where icebergs collide and where everything is frozen”, according to its booklet’s proclamation. And, yes, from Closing the Eternity’s ‘Pulse of Iceilence’ onwards, we’re pretty much treated to some lengthy meldings of Arctic shimmer, spacey swirl and soft drone-saturated pieces that are notable mostly for the fact they sound like the workings of only one mind. All the same, there’s some nice stuff on offer here, such as Tho-So-AA’s pleasantly bleep-filled ‘Crotesk’, Troum’s Bremen harbour-utilising ‘Giascei’, and Canadian Aidan Baker’s processed guitar-based ‘Beneath the Ice’. Complete with contributions also from Lightwave, Tuu, Netherworld and others, Cryosphere creates a satisfying atmosphere thankfully falling nearer Biosphere or Thomas Köner’s recordings than any hammy ‘dark ambient’ drivel. As both a concept in itself and a statement of intent for this new label, it at least appears promising enough from my admittedly rather humble vantage point, anyway. (RJ)"

ADVERSE EFFECT

Thirty-two Review

For those viewers creeped out by the wintry claustrophobia of films like Kubrick’s The Shining and Carpenter’s The Thing, but unable to effectively recreate the mood by being fortunate enough to track down their ultra-rare corresponding soundtracks, Glacial Movements may just have provided a remedy in the form of their new compilation. The label, which professes to specialize in “glacial and isolationist ambient,” has issued their first release, Cryosphere, a collection of nine lengthy, cold ambient tracks clocking in at almost 80 minutes. The collection is designed to evoke the isolation and bitter chill of winter with these arctic soundscapes that, in keeping with the album’s theme, are suitably icy, wind-blasted, and sure to raise gooseflesh on even the most thick-skinned, jaded listener.

The record’s initial tone is set with two noise-based pieces from Closing The Eternity and Northaunt, respectively. These two tracks, although atmospheric in their own right, are arguably the most abrasive pieces on Cryosphere and establish an appropriately bleak mood with their jarring shards of sound, calling to mind — particularly on the album’s opener, “Pulse of Iceilence” — images of a ship grinding to a full stop as it capsizes against an iceberg. Tho-So-Aa’s “Cryotesk” steers the album into considerably eerier territory with its cavernous, chant-like drones and gentle pulses of electronics struggling to be heard over dense, desolate waves of sound that wax and wane, creating a sense of oppression that intermittently ebbs in intensity. Similarly, Lightwave’s “Proxima Thule” is structured around dark, monolithic drones punctuated with high-end whines of feedback and spooky metallic scrapings echoing forth from the darkness. The shapes and textures of the track shift and modulate to create a sort of deep-sea ambience that suggests the sonar pings and undersea reverberations of a submarine resting on the ocean floor and gradually collapsing in upon itself.

Tuu’s “Silent Writing” is an extraordinary track employing some particularly uneasy, borderline disturbing electronic keyboards that summon forth an ominous, brooding resonance that is truly the stuff of nightmares. Troum’s “Giascei” is another nightmarish track based around digitally manipulated mechanical sounds, resulting in a dourly compelling arrangement. The piece is a frigid, crumbling work suggestive of a windswept, Lovecraftian Antarctic landscape populated by shambling, colossal creatures inching menacingly toward us as our legs remain firmly rooted in the ice, unable to transport us to safety.

Cryosphere’s foreboding aura is offset somewhat by Aidan Baker’s aptly titled “Beneath the Ice,” a track colored with ice-blue submarine hues and replete with aquatic atmospherics. The album’s two closing tracks, Netherworld’s “Kryos” and Oopho’s “Cold Sun,” are fittingly bleak pieces redolent of the deepest cold of space and evoking images of ice-capped planetary surfaces light years away from the nearest heat source. The frozen echoes of “Cold Sun,” for example, suggest a crippled spacecraft adrift in the cosmos for eternity. Cryosphere is a remarkably cohesive and well-sequenced collection of dark-but-diamantine ambient music that is best suited for contemplative headphone settings. Alternating between the cinematic and the claustrophobic, these pieces, if they don’t trigger a mild case of cabin fever, will transport the listener to a vast, otherworldly wilderness of snow and frozen wastes, rich in atmosphere and impressive to behold

Tiny Mix Tapes written by Olskooly

Thirty-three Review

ELEGY IBERICA nr.5

Thirty-four Review

FEAR DROP 13

Thirty-five Review

TEXTURA

Thirty-six Review

Glacial Movements is a new label based in Italy specialising in atmospheric ambient music and Cryosphere acts as an introduction to their style and musical ethics. Compiled from a series of quite lengthy tracks, Cryosphere explores the imagery, tone and presence created by a range of mostly unknown artists such as Lightwave, Northaunt, Tuu and Oophoi alongside better known names such as Aidan Baker and Troum.
Glacial Movements’ label head Netherworld also contributes a track.

Billed on their website as “glacial and isolationist ambient”, it doesn’t take long to see where that tag came from. Northaunt’s “Crocker Land” fits this theme perfectly; windswept, expansive, unrushed and beautiful. Although this music is distinctly icy in tone it is also gentle and visceral, slowly enveloping you in its imagery and cold invigorating tones. This whole mood permeates through the album, sometimes venturing down darker more ominous paths but always steady and restrained, letting the full picture slowly unfold to the listener. You might not find rhythms or beats in this music but it doesn’t need it, it
is all about atmosphere and imagery. A track such as “Cryotesk” by Tho-So-Aa for example is so fluid and serene, even the deep creeping bassy tones and insistently anxious bleeps can’t distract from the languid droning texture that flows throughout. Lightwave’s “Proxima Thule” is the first of the tracks to head in a darker direction, adding some hi-tech almost glitchy effects and flooding the fluid backdrop with a tense cinematic air of foreboding. This mood is carried through to “Silent Writing” by Tuu who use low bassy drones and minimal synth tones to create a spacious wilderness of sound that could be beautiful or threatening depending on your interpretation. Troum’s “Giascei” however opts for epic rumbles and mammoth groans alongside tiny microscopic sounds that build tense atmosphere as if warning of an approaching alien swarm in a remote polar wasteland. It is left to Aidan Baker to lift the
mood with the gently drifting “Beneath the Ice”, a track with an optimistic outlook and positive radiance that ends in a slightly more sinister tone. Netherworld, the mysterious label head of Glacial Movements, contributes “Kryos”, a track with a melancholy icy feel and the occasional huge bassy boom.

Cryosphere is an interesting album in that it is primarily a serene well-crafted compilation of floating ambient tracks but there is also an almost hidden dark undercurrent of impending terror. It is almost like an expedition to a remote polar wasteland that is being stalked by danger unknown. A slightly sinister tone underlies the tracks as if watching and waiting for an opportunity to reveal itself. In that respect it is very cinematic and atmospheric, adding hidden depth to the justly tagged “glacial and isolationist” nature of the music.

Paul Lloyd by IGLOO MAGAZINE

Thirty-seven Review

The debut release of this new label is a sampler dedicated to the purest forms of soundscapes music. As it’s claimed on the cover, “Cryosphere” want to be a musical journey that transports the listener into glacial and unexplored lands where icebergs collide and where everything is frozen. 9 bands have been selected to recreate this frozen feeling of ambient moods. Among the most familiar project I noticed Northaunt, Troum, Netherworld and Oophoi, but the list has been completed by Closing The Eternity, Tho-So-Aa, Lightwave, Tuu and Aidan Baker. All bands invite us to join them unto pure cold soundscapes appealing for the listener’s imagination. Closing The Eternity and Tuu are both the best stimulators for my alerted imagination. I’m like entering a nihilistic universe of eternal darkness created by the only power of ambient sound!(DP:6/7)DP.

SIDE LINE

Thirty-eight Review

The quality is fairly variable going from very effective to ambient sound scapeing by numbers, though there’s enough here to make it worth wild. In all there are nine tracks lasting between six and eleven minutes a piece. Some of the stand out moments to me would be;  Northaunts  who with their track crockery land bring to mind slowly been surrounding  arctic vastness and loneliness, with a mix of swirling artic winds and melodic/ haunted drone craft. It brings to mind walk across vast artic dunes the sun just coming up and  setting the snow to twinkle. You feel like you could shout and shout and never be heard. Aidan Baker's Beneath the ice with its calmly growing and building harmonic icy tones brings to my mind nearing the beautiful Aurora Borealis thats dancing above vast snow mounts, slowly become more and more part of the colours.

An interesting opening release from this label, which will hopeful be able to build on the whole glacial isolation theme and vibe.

Roger Batty by MUSIQUE MACHINE

Thirty-nine Review

VARIOUS ARTISTS Cryosphere (Glacial Movements) • Cryosphere is the inaugural release of Glacial Movements, a fledgling label-project curated by Alessandro Tedeschi, one of a shadowy band of isolation-ambient droners scattered through Europe. As Netherworld, Tedeschi has released on Oöphoi’s Umbra/Penumbra imprint, also collaborating with the Deep Listening maven himself. Here compiled are nine artists whose approaches are homogeneous yet individually voiced; from veterans like erstwhile ritual ambienteers TUU and guitar-wrangling drone-anists Troum to relative unknowns Closing the Eternity and Tho-So-Aa. Predictably, Cryosphere is an album of ice-floe drift and polar ooze, for Glacial’s mission statement is explicitly to “transport[s] the listener into glacial and unexplored lands where icebergs collide and where everything is frozen.” So we have here a document of chthonic minimalist soundscapes and deep-drone seclusion, of dark ambient, yes, though with goth-gloom (cf., Cold Meat Industries) and gore-core (cf., Malignant) gratifyingly withheld.

Siberians Closing the Eternity launch out with “Pulse of Iceilence,” sur-realized with something vibraphoney that has you hypothermically adrift, beset by chiming and rumbling, buzzing and dark trickling icewater. Northaunt’s “Crocker Land” is one of endless vistas of tundra and frozen wastes interspersed with abyssal yawnings, its harmonized droning akin to Biosphere stretched out in a wind-tunnel. Tho-so-aa’s “Cryotesk” carries a submerged menace, distant sounds fleeting, found sounds swimming up, chthonic rumble, sonar-tones, enshrouded in reverberant mist. Lightwave and TUU ghost in too, with their own versions of slow-shift minimalism. Troum take field recordings harvested from Bremen harbor and fold their reverberant time-stretched implosions into glass singings. Possibly the most literal-mindedly representative of all the pieces herein, their “Giascei” is 12-minutes of desolate drift, attended by creaks, groans, and thumps, recalling the lost sub-lull of NWW's Salt Marie Celeste. Aidan Baker satisfies himself with guitar alone, and it’s plenty, as he layers it from wisps of gossamer crepuscularity, slowly swelling, with striations of ever more chimes and blurs of motifs, into a complex weave of plate-shifting textures; he makes of “Beneath the Ice” what sounds a denser more active derivation from Roach’s dusky Midnight Moon fretymology. Netherworld himself proposes “Kryos,” an eldritch depths-sounding on which he notably plays “old gates” (!). Finally the Lord of Nu-Dark-Age himself, Oöphoi, proposes “Cold Sun,” a long slow crawl of textured rumble through elemental frozen arcana. Ultimately more stark than dark, Cryosphere evokes wan light, ashen haze, and lost horizons glinting in boreal dawn. An expertly rendered compendium of extreme remotion in the most vivid of monochrome—Big chill. (AL) •

e/i Magazine

Forty  Review

Piszę tę recenzję w środku lata, w dusznym, nagrzanym mieszkaniu i przyznaję, że opisywanie płyty, której zawartość z założenia kojarzyć ma się z zimnem jest w obecnej sytuacji zadaniem nieco trudnym. Niemniej jednak postaram się odnaleźć w sobie wystarczającą ilość chłodu aby przedstawić Wam moje odczucia związane z tym wydawnictwem ;)

 "Cryosphere" (kriosfera - pokrywa śnieżno-lodowa występująca na obszarach polarnych) - taką nazwę nosi składanka wydana przez Glacial Movements, będąca debiutem wydawniczym tego stosunkowo młodego jeszcze, włoskiego labelu.

Udział w "Cryosphere" wzięło dziewięć (mniej lub bardziej znanych) projektów związanych ze sceną mroczno - ambientową. Każdy z nich stara się na swój sposób wprowadzić nas w pokryte lodem, rozległe, niezbadane przestrzenie. Mimo różnic w podejściu artystów do sposobu kreowania dźwięków, wydawnictwo jest spójne i stanowić może zamkniętą całość.

Co na nim znajdziemy? Drony, pulsacje, buczenia, bzyczenia, różnej maści "kosmiczne" odgłosy czyli to, co miłośnicy dark ambientu tak bardzo sobie cenią a co stało się już standardem w tego rodzaju muzyce. Kompilacja powinna przypaść do gustu zwłaszcza zwolennikom minimalistycznych i izolacjonistycznych odmian tego gatunku. Atmosfera utworów zawartych na tej płycie nie przygniata mrokiem, jak to często w dark ambiencie bywa, i w większości jest bardzo przestrzenna (choć zdarzają się i bardziej "zagęszczone" momenty), dość dobrze oddając narzucony jej koncept.

Minusem "Cryosphere" jest zbyt długi czas trwania (niemal 80 minut) co przy jakby nie patrzeć dość monotonnych dźwiękach może nużyć i zniechęcać do przesłuchania albumu bez przerwy od początku do końca. Pomijając ten drobny szczegół muzyka zawarta na tej składance potrafi uprzyjemnić oczekiwanie na nadejście chłodniejszych dni.

KAOS EX MACHINA

Forty-one Review

HIS VOICE nr.2

Forty-two Review

Compilations are a difficult beast for the reviewer to tame sometimes, mostly being a collection many different animals each with their own traits and personalities but very rarely able to live together. Occasionally though one comes across a creative ecosystem where every element within cohabits with a striking and harmonious interdependence whilst retaining a strong and essential individuality. This album is one such and is the debut release from Italy’s Glacial Movements Records (run by Alessandro Tedeschi, creative force behind the NETHERWORLD outfit) and invites some of the finest artists working in the ambient/isolationist fields today to consider one of our last frontiers and most sensitive ecosystems: the polar extremities of this planet. Take the Antarctic for instance. What visions does it conjure to the inner eye? One automatically thinks of wordless beauty and monolithic icebergs floating in blue waters, ice white & fragile and where the only thing capable of capturing the essence is cliché, worn and devalued by overuse. Our first impression of a place like Antarctica is that of a land of motionlessness and monotonous stretches of trackless snow and ice with no distinguishing features, a land of eternal stasis, where nothing happens and where even the sun shuns the cold and declines to spread its beneficence for half the year.  The nine tracks on this album of natural sounds, cold electronics and treated acoustic instruments intends to change that perception, and the music’s liquid movements are frozen together into a unifying whole to create a sonic document full of both minute and space-filling sounds, microscopically shifting movements, fine textures and haunting atmospheres. The giants of dark ambient sound-scapes NORTHAUNT, THO-SO-AA & OOPHOI provide cold, sweeping and shivering ice-sculptures seemingly carved from the very landscape itself, dropping you into the crackling cold stainless eternity of the polar continent, with only a pale ineffectual sun to light your way and the distant unreachable mountains the only visual relief. CLOSING THE ETERNITY, LIGHTWAVE, NETHERWORLD & Martin Franklin’s TUU are quieter, more fragile and even colder affairs, leaving you to ponder a vast snowbound landscape and turning it into something vaguely menacing and uninviting, persuading you that you are an unwanted interloper and that it just wants to be left alone to evolve in its own glacial timescale without human interference. TROUM pushes the isolation even further, disorienting sounds emerging from snowblindness, microcosmic skitterings and macrocosmic crackings weaving a rich narrative of perpetual activity as icicles and icebergs shatter; the constant movement forever unwitnessed. You truly are at World’s End, where human feet very rarely tread and it is a privilege to be here; you are a transient invited guest, a mere spot of momentary colour in a universe of white – and once you leave the colour will be nothing but a hazy memory. Fragility and the timeless beauty of a world even rarer is the theme of AIDAN BAKER’S “Beneath the Ice”, a freezing underwater journey of half-light filtered through pristine white layers, spears of sunlight piercing the lightless depths playfully, occasionally picking out something alien and fleeting, bringing home the truth of how little we know about our own home planet. The story the album weaves entices us to explore and witness this place where humans but seldom come, holding us spellbound with its unrealised variety. Collectively this compilation is like the sonic equivalent of a written travelogue of a journey through the moods and hidden facets of the frozen ends of our world with each individual artist’s contribution a chapter devoted to some choice stop along the way and pointing it out for our deep consideration. More importantly, each of these ‘chapters’ complements every other contribution perfectly and without breaking thematic continuity to create a seamless whole.

A rare treat then – a compilation that holds together well both thematically and artistically and also has the added bonus of serving as a fine introduction to a new label. Mr. Tedeschi is to be applauded for his efforts. (RATING 8/10)

-[S:M:J63] by Wounds of the Earth