Source of Present arrives in a richly-hued card digipack of two panels. Cover art, created by Max Corbacho himself, is intriguingly ambiguous and engrossing: twin bands of crystalline light shaft across the front cover in lustrous diagonals, darkness massing around like an enveloping shroud. Purple depths support lilac and ice-blue highlights, each in constant interplay with the other. The rear cover holds track titles, the inner left panel presents relevant credits and website information; simple, minimal, elegant.

This latest album from Spanish ambient master Max Corbacho delivers a highly refined ambient experience. This is serene, floatation music of a sublime nature – delicate, subtle, serene, carrying the listener afar. Tracks range from the twenty three minute forty four second opener The Beginning of Remembering via three shorter pieces, Transparent Phenomena being the shortest at just less than four and a half minutes, to a pair of epics at the end of nearly nineteen and thirteen minutes respectively. Max Corbacho seems to sink his beautiful sounds in ever greater lustre and sheen – the clarity, vibrance and intensity of Source of Present being top notch.

A kindred kind of beauty and intrinsic power making those albums special is also felt in the tranquil, smooth morphing textural waves and currents making up «Source of Present», which also holds a distinct nocturnal touch and feel. Imminent currents raise from the deep on the evocative opener «The beginning of remembering». From there, the smooth and spacious drift continues on five separate tracks as a dreamy, highly immersive aural tapestry shifting neatly between light and shadow.

The profound feel marking the opener also applies to the two longer pieces found at the end of this high quality release. Immersion strikes deep on the 18-minute title piece, an aural celebration of the here and now. On the final track «On this journey» (that I would rename «Into the Infinite») soft, warm and rich rays of sunlight lit up making place and time dissolve without effort.

With «Source of Present» Max has produced another winner and a great companion for those doing some soul searching and inner travel.

I always wanted to write few lines on this masterwork, so now it’s finally the right time. But first of all, I must say this is not the newest work of Max Corbacho, in Barcelona based composer. Max has released at the end of December 2010, «Deep Time» download only album, but since I am a die-hard fan of physical CDs, I would rather focus on this CD album. Before you enter the sonic worlds of Max Corbacho, you are confronted with cover artwork of the medieval rose window of the graceful Cathedral Basilica of Saint Denis. And what about the music? «Ars Lucis» is the most serene and peaceful work Max Corbacho has ever done. Listening to opener, «Light-Matrix Portal», is like standing in the choir of this cathedral and exploring all the architectural monumentality, gracefulness and magnificence. The music is very minimal in its structure, sounding really quiet and slow-motion floating, but its effect is enormous, just like the cathedral, it’s monumental, graceful and magnicifent. «Light-Matrix Portal» is undoubtedly one of the most tranquil, immense and impact compositions I have ever heard in ambient music!!! This lyrical beauty and spaciousness weaves through the whole album, even if divided in 7 pieces, the overall feel is like one long-form continous composition. All based on floating meditative soundwalls, ocassionally enriched by some swirling, emerging and fading-out sounds. But always appearing in very elegant and fragile texture. «Narthex», «Pillar Ascension», «Transept Sapphire Glass» or «Choir Ecstasy» can’t be better examples, but I could easily mention here also last two remaining pieces. «Ars Lucis» is mysteriously beautiful, amorphous and captivating composition presenting Max Corbacho in the deepest and finest end of the pure atmospheric soundscape genre. Bravó Maestro!!!

Richard Gürtler (Bratislava, Slovakia)

Morpheus Music & The Mall Magazine

Beatless, minimal ambient air. As if painting with the sonic equivalent of light, Max Corbacho establishes a deep, resonant, anticipatory expanse and fills it with shafts and shards of shifting colour and density. Broad beams and hazes of tone drift in unhurried solemnity, rising heavenward in weightless clouds or massing gradually into translucent omnipresence. The ponderous large-scale undulations of these evolving, spacious atmospheres are illuminated with lustrous glimmers, sparkles and radiances of a more fleeting nature. Ripples and fluctuations that pass through the weight of the air with faster motion. There is a reverential dignity to this music that beautifully captures something of the architecture and luminance of the cover imagery; this graceful lustre, this art of light.

Ars Lucis comes in a jewel case with a two panel insert. Imagery is centred on a series of photographs of the Basilica of St Denis in Paris, France. Elegant grey columns and arches are presented rising like huge plumes of stone supporting luminous stained glass windows. The glowing blue, indigo and violets hues of the tinted panes beam all the brighter amid the starkness of stone. The front cover opens out into a two page panorama where the imagery is allowed to glow without distraction. On the rear cover track titles are set out alongside timings for each piece. The flip side of the insert once more gives much space to the glorious visual impact of the abbey church with information displayed to the left: production details, credits, thanks and website addresses.

Max Corbacho’s ninth album follows the progression into deep, silken ambience set by previous releases Breathstream and The Talisman. The album is released via the ad21 label that Max maintains with kindred spirit Bruno Sanfilippo. Ars Lucis contains seven transcendent compositions that range in length from the eighteen minute seven second conclusion Mirabilis Structura to the two minute fifty one second brevity of Keystone Meditation. In total almost seventy four minutes of sublime melody-free magnificence. If you have enjoyed the direction of Max’s most recent previous albums, then this one will be a joy to you. The Max Corbacho website provides clips to listen to, as does the ad21 website.