|
"Is this the return of the king? Certainly it is the return of a long-defunct, perennial eBay icon. Proponents of some of the finest ambient music to hit the racks during the genre’s "legitimization" in the '90s, Britain’s Em:t label dissolved under mysterious circumstances around 1998. It was sorely missed, the trademark packaging, featuring various exotic fauna, the lush, widescreen sonic production, and the peerless music contained therein, from the known (Carl Stone) to unknown (Woob, Miasma, International People’s Gang) set a design/sonic standard mimicked by many, equalized by few. Rejoice, rejoice, then, for Em:t is back, and judging by the participants on this compiled re-launch, it’s a revival to be taken seriously. The rigors set by the label’s original owners are still in place: this isn’t your mother’s grade-school "ambient," but a fertile testing ground for the exploration of hybrid ideas. Gregor Samsa leads it off with a short slice of digifolk, "Paralysis," not unlike the musics being wrung from Japanese imprints Plop and Childisc. Radium88 present "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Space Traveller," close to four minutes of zero-g drift and starshine. High Skies trumps the '80s empire of the senses, not in style but in the kind of post-Klaus Schulze keyboard luminousities once housed on Schulze’s old Innovative Communications label: crushed cymbals, embroidered sequencers, Moogs liplocked with gods. American space music artist Brannan Lane contributes the longest and most engaging track, "Desert Sunrise," harnessing the deepspace rigs of Steve Roach to an old-school Euro-chassis of slo-mo drums and sequences which alternately frothe, seethe and churn. Richie Warburton summons back the spirit of the Em:t of old with his samplefied feast "00," snapshots of flocking birds, jet exhaust and other random organic ephemera introducing a gregarious rhythmic motif of whooping cranes, velvet snares and those wonderful Dreamy synth sounds that, apparently, we never tire of. Welcome back our intrepid space explorers, making the ambient genre a stronghold once again." ~ Ei Magazine (US)
|
