steering clear of the mainstream
since 2001

june 2010

review
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info opinion

Ian Holloway & Banks Bailey

"A Brief Sojourn" CDR

Quiet World

Genre: mesmeric ambient drone

Swansea, UK

April 2010

On A Brief Sojourn, Quiet World head Ian Holloway (formerly Psychic Space Invasion) constructs wonderfully solemn ambient gloriousness out of synthesizers and Banks Bailey's crisp, bucolic field recordings. It's a stellar match – this isn't the first time the two have collaborated – as Holloway's gloriously low-key drones coalesce perfectly with the incidental recordings: a trickling creek, wind in the thickets, insect symphonies... All together, the disc has that uncanny ability to take you to (your own mental rendition of) the sound sources themselves, though imbued with an inner tranquility that meshes perfectly with the pastoral nature of the audio. Through the album's lone, substantial composition, several stretches of mood are encountered, including periods of uplifting lightness, vague menace, and dreary longingness. Certainly, one of Holloway's core talents is his ability to conjure up these feelings with such minimal sonic output – it's all about sound placement and the choice of tones. Design aside, however, what results from all this is a thirty-six minute passage of sound that is at once marvellously listenable, exquisite to rest to, and more than a little reminiscent of ambient work by Biosphere – especially with regards to the field recordings, which remind one of a less polar formulation of Geir Jenssen's atmospheric designs. A subtle treat.

ian's myspace

Not from this album:
 

Michael Tau

[Vitals: 1 track, distributed by the label, released 2009]