REFLECT LIKE a MIRROR, RESPOND LIKE an ECHO

Album Review

A Produce's Reflect Like a Mirror, Respond Like an Echo is an expertly crafted ambient, almost trance-like sonic excursion into the dark underworld of minimalist sonic tapestries. With Reflect, A Produce has truly created a recording that grabs the listener and makes their ears perk up. A Produce has always been known in ambient circles for his amazing ability to make ordinary instruments and instrumentation sound extraordinary, and there's nothing new with this 1997 re-release, which was originally a limited edition in 1992. Reflect really shows A Produce craftily blending richly sonorous timbres and multi-dimensional trance-like drumming, and what's more important is how far ahead of it's time this recording really is, as if the artist in his single-sighted pursuit of excellence came up with a sound and an ambience that the ambient genre, as a whole, wouldn't really yield until some time later. Reflect is quite possibly one of the best recordings in A Produce's catalog. He's done a lot of things — of particular interest is his 1999 Hypnos Recordings collaboration with M. Griffin which was a profoundly critical release — but as far as solo work goes, this is one of the best, and it's a great starting point.