Matt Howarth. SONIC CURIOSITY
This release from 2006 offers 72 minutes of calming ambience. Expansive tonalities conspire with dramatic electronics to generate lavish soundscapes linking abstract realms with human ambitions. Textures flow seamlessly, ascending to untold altitudes while simultaneously burrowing deep into the listener’s cerebellum. Ponderous tones swirl and coalesce while delicate embellishments waft through this sonic medium. Tenuous sounds gurgle softly in the distance, approaching to loom overhead as they evoke moody sedation.
Swaying from lobe to lobe, the harmonic streams connect instinct and deduction, blurring the distinctions between these ruminations with fragile structures of drifting resonance. Contemplation is urged into being, rousing cognitive associations between outer physicality and inner reflection.
While generally harmonic in nature, this music does possess a hint of melodic substance which remains meticulously just beyond clear perception, inciting the listener to reach past their peripheral hearing and discover an external psychic territory. This extraneous region is seasoned by luxurious electronic effects of subtle definition which suitably flavor the harmonic flow without interfering with the tuneage’s overall soothing efficacy.
Minimal substantiality adopts a greater proportion as the textural currents produce an infinite panorama of pensive disposition. Introspective passages are drenched with shrewdly crafted ambience that stimulates cellular memory, filling the listener’s mind with vast potential.
This music achieves a lofty presence very much in the vein of Steve Roach’s tranquil compositions.