This release from 2011 offers 74 minutes of sparkling ambience.

Three tracks comprise this release, and they are long, really long, allowing the songs to gradually evolve and excellently establish a mood of cosmic infinity.

Atmospheric tones dominate the first piece, creating a panorama of limitless scope that suits the tenuous music’s sparse definition. Scattered throughout this void are fragile electronics that twinkle like remote stars, tantalizing the flow with their cosmic expressions. Deeper tones slowly enter the mix, establishing a foundation that is elusive and not really a foundation at all, but simply another stage in the constant accretion of sounds that muster to coalesce into these ambient soundscapes. The twinkling diodes persist in resurging, each time bringing with them another taste of infinity. The flow remains harmonic, never achieving any discernible melody, but the structure is rich with vaporous potency. Spoken voice wanders into the mix, whispered at the edge of forever and heralding the advent of a universe to come.

The second track possesses a darker temperament to its minimal definition. The notes strive to inject more density into the gaseous stream, an impending mass that is seasoned by the persistence of those twinkling electronics. As the track progresses, the sparkling embellishments grow more expressive, producing a zone of transition that illuminates the inner mind with their portentous glitter. After a period of recession, the flow reestablishes itself with renewed vigor, smoldering with chilly resonance.

The last track continues in the same vein: peppering remote texturals with twinkling electronics which serve to banish the dark and provide understated effulgence whose distant origins only increase their appeal. The twinkling rise and ebbs, teasing the listener’s psyche with this wandering definition.

Taken as a whole, this album is a wonderful journey deep into realms where substance has no meaning. The compositions urge the listener to cast off their mortal trappings and immerse themselves in an environment devoid of distractions, while the twinkling continues to provide a lifeline that also serves to tickle the psyche into introspection and serenity.

Matt Howarth – SONIC CURIOSITY

www.soniccuriosity.com

 

Having most recently lifted listeners upward with the celestial/sacred drifts of Ars Lucis, Max Corbacho turns the sound around and heads downward in the penumbral, primal and purposely murky spaces of Deep Time. For people who’ve listened to Corbacho in the past, this new release is a distinct departure, a strictly atmospheric work of formless drifts, painted with cave echoes and rumbling drones with smatterings of disembodied voices rising out of the gloom. It’s not dark ambient per se; it never ventures into anything quite that dense or heavy. Rather, let’s call it grey ambient–it’s dark in a way that leads us to the edge of that shadowy space inside ourselves and then lets our head take over as the sound moves forward. Slight touches of dissonance up the subtle anxiety, from not-quite-in-tune chimes clanging in a phantom wind to anguished curls of sound that rise and fade to mist. Corbacho’s pacing mixes contemplation and suspense, points where the breathing eases to the beatless cadence paired off with sections where some edgy thing in the flow constricts the breath. Entire passages move through, bending time as they go. Deep Time is constructed in three long parts, the shortest coming in at 17 1/2 minutes. Each is a solid long-form piece in itself, sharing a sense of character and theme but still richly individual. Taken together, it’s an hour of mood- and mind-altering ambient.

Corbacho goes all out on Deep Time to sculpt this trio of worlds, daring to take an unfamiliar path and, in the long run, making it distinctly his. It’s a disc that needs to be listened to closely. Each moment is loaded with motion and dimension, Corbacho’s sounds unlocking primal sensations and spinning them off into an isolated mindspace for us to chase after and examine. Spend time in Deep Time–who knows what you might find in there?