Max Corbacho is back again with a beautiful ambient album that express a deep sense of connection and unity.

Try to breath the gentle sounds floating in the air as if your lungs have thousands of little ears. Allow this fresh energy to enter into your body and mind and keep the stream. Soon the music takes you out of your bonderies, in the luminous space, where is no day, nor night, no form, nor colour.Follow the great breath, step into the temple of dissolution and surrender to the Pure Being. BreathStream album invites us to embrace Immanence and Transcendence, the fullness and the void and to discover a deeper reality through a sublime musical experience that will leave you breathless.

Expansive, drifting ambient zones – beatless, minimal. The series of compositions on Breath Stream are smooth, flowing sonic states that fade seamlessly one into another creating an unbroken listening experience. Airy drones and steady velvet washes gently rise and fall in graceful slow motion, the sound thickening into harmonious even tone in places, then dispersing into almost atonal enormity. At times the intensity of the music drops down low as if the listener were increasingly isolated, distant, remote – or perhaps simply more profoundly at rest, wholly immersed and almost motionless. Beguiling effects burble or flutter on the peripheries, little motes and flickers some barely perceived, sonic breezes drifting through the aural space.

MOOD

The most pervasive mood here is one of almost blissful submission – a captivating serenity imbued with a sense of enveloping immensity. The track titles effectively draw together strands of galactic isolation and deeply personal inner experience – The Great Breath, This Luminous Space, No Day nor Night, Pure Being. Max’s music suggests the tranquil euphoria of being suspended weightless among morphing luminous nebulae, warm clouds of shifting colour, beautiful dreams and faintly recalled memories.

ARTWORK

The Breath Stream jewelcase is a deep, dark spacey blue package. Initially the main image appears as a view of infinite space – closer inspection reveals a horizon, one bright spiralling arm laid out like a flat plain stretching away into the distance. Above starlike clusters form further spirals, spirals of spirals – clusters of imaginary galaxies. Similar visuals fill the rear cover – an unobtrusive tracklist hanging in the upper left quadrant – times alongside. The two panel insert opens to display a closer view of the front cover image – here focussed on the foreground – a little like a glass bottomed boat to the universe. Information is minimal – credits to the left a quote from Vietnamese Monk Thich Nhat Hanh to the right – «Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts.»

OVERALL

Breath Stream builds upon the solid foundation laid down by Max Corbacho’s previous release The Talisman. Coming now as the eighth release from this rising Spanish ambient star – the new album exhibits a formidable depth of sound unveiled with masterful restraint. Much of the music arose from long improvisational sessions utilising Max’s collection of hardware synths, catching those moments of magic – selecting and arranging the most absorbing passages into unbroken flow. The album is to be the first of a series of digital releases, offering downloads at iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, eMusic and Napster, among others, and, also, full CD quality downloads through the well respected new download platform www.musiczeit.com. Catch some samples at the Musiczeit page.

WHO WILL LIKE THIS ALBUM

If you enjoyed The Talisman then Breath Stream will take you further into the rapture and beauty of Max’s enormous musical space. This is a release for fans of warm, inviting, minimal ambience with the soft sonic density of Thom Brennan, Numina and Steve Roach. No beats – just infinite space – effulgent, dark, rich in colour, perpetually black.

Morpheus Music & The Mall Magazine

STYLE

Expansive beatless spacey ambience created by the establishing of immense translucent zones of overlapping tonal masses. These swelling multiple layers are lustrous and dense like massive backlit clouds drifting in darkness. A warmth breathes into some pieces, still panoramic and open, but with waves and undulations of harmony and serenity. In other places the sound drops away into unfathomable depths where fractal lights play lazily on the surface of the abyss. The density of the music almost impenetrable at times – suggestive of enormity and endlessness. Amnios contains whispering voices, echoing sussurations, a hint of humanity adrift on meandering tides. Ruby For The Sun builds on a rumbling weight of sound, the glisten and shimmer of gossamer membranes unfolding their colour above – electronic washes bathing everything in gliding radiance. Cellular Memory contains near percussive flashes of white noise and trickles of glassy synthesiser, liquid clear amid the oceanic swell and pull of steady drones – the track fading almost imperceptibly, slowly, off into infinite distance …

MOOD

The Talisman engenders a definite sense of awe and wonder – a feeling of universal enormity pervades the whole album shot through with delicate filaments of light and colour. In general the mood is one of ponderous, harmonious drama, the occasional dissonant tones and grumbling clouds usually brightened by shifting unseen luminaries. Rather like a series of aural nebulae – each track has its own distinct personality but all clearly share a common structural nature.

ARTWORK

The imagery on this album is very beautiful – fractal swirls and organic loops and skins laid out one on top of another – all in luscious hues of green, olive and pale yellow. The designs were apparently created using Apophysis 2.04 beta – a neat piece of software ideally suited to producing abstract graphics. Subtle olive lettering disturbs the visual impact as little as possible – tidy and tasteful. Internal panels make use of black and white versions of similar images – with an explanation of the project, recording details and contact information laid out in a simple white font.

OVERALL

Max Corbacho seems to be growing in stature with each release – this is a very ambitious sound presented with a high degree of polish and attention to detail. There are eleven compositions on the album, each created sometime between 2004 and 2006. Max’s promotional material explains that «most of these songs were composed during various, long, deep meditative improvisation sessions». Equipment used for the project included «my beloved Korg Triton & Korg Z1, and sound processing outboard expansion units such Reverbs and Delays, as well some other esoteric gear». The results are timeless, placeless, progression free infusions of harmony, floating as if suspended in the vastness of eternity. The Talisman is released via ad21 Music – a label set up in 1998 by Max and fellow musician Bruno Sanfilippo to showcase their own ambient and contemporary electronic music releases.

WHO WILL LIKE THIS ALBUM

If you like Steve Roach’s work, The Talisman might well be right up your street. Professionally produced ambient grandeur – free of beats and melodies, but thick with tenebrous drones and glowing textural density.