silo 10

Album Review

Recorded live in January 2004, this wholly instrumental album is the kind of ambient record that might come as close as anything can to crossover appeal to both new age and avant-garde listeners. It's not dissonant or threatening enough to make more new age-identified ears uncomfortable, yet it's adventurous enough to please the palates of those who customarily stick to more experimental sounds. With just guitar, synth effects, loops, and treatments, the duo create a somber, sturdy bed of sustained, oft-overlapping electronic waves and pulsations (indeed; one of the pieces is titled "Pulse"). They might work better as background music for late nights and cloudy days than something that sustains active interest as foreground listening. But if it's used for ambience rather than for centering attention, it's above-average for that purpose, and varies in texture and volume, at times ebbing away into space, at others throbbing like a vein. "Pulse" has staccato plucks that lend the track an orchestral touch, as well as some guitar slides that will, just barely, remind listeners with rock backgrounds of some of Pink Floyd's space trips. "Wildlife Crossing" is as close as the CD gets to anger or storminess, with some clashing tones and upper-register blips decaying into the stratosphere. It's just too electronic and beat-less, however, to be a rock album; it's in the contemplative ambient realm, though on the somewhat darker side of that area.