An interesting album from C J Boyd, the first of his to be reviewed on SoT, and an unusual one, in that its soundscape of, broadly, ambient spacey music is constructed entirely from "organic" instruments played by Boyd himself. More importantly, the musical effect is as intended, Boyd creating a soundscape that is interesting texturally, melodically and rhythmically: overall an album of pleasant instrumental groovic ambient music.
Boyd's main instruments for these soundscapes are the electric bass guitar and double bass. It's refreshing to hear the electric bass played as a lead rather than as a rhythm instrument, you get a different feel to the music – it's good. Boyd uses the bass as the "foreground" of this soundscape, if you like, it's the element that draws the focus, whether he is running melodic lines or setting up a mantric pattern. Behind this, in the soundscape's "background", the interest is mainly provided by harmonica and melodica,. The harmonica is droned, not played like a blues instrument, so it would be the equivalent compositionally to "prog" musicians using a keyboard synthesizer. A melodica, too, has keys, but is actually a reed instrument: again Boyd uses it to produce spacey, ambient textures for his background. Very effective! If nothing else, it would be a wonderful exercise in showing what wonderful textures you can develop from these types of "traditional" instruments, but as a bonus the music is very good too!
The pieces develop from quiet beginnings, building up a slow crescendo in volume and pace; the last piece, "we know time", then drops back in intensity for the finale.
For all those of you who enjoy ambient, spacey, groovic music, this album brings unusual textures to the fore and may well be worth investigating.
Track Listing:-
1) everytime i don the ski mask (15:14)
2) pensive pez (8:54)
3) we know time (19:56)
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