TRACKLIST

1. Maelstrom. . . . . . .6:15  2. Deep . . . . . . . . .3:18  3. Égregore. . . . .6:23  4. Night Is My Time . . .4:20  5. Nocturlabe . . . . . .4:12  6. Inner Space. . . . . .6:34  7. Stella Maris . . . . .3:05  8. Descendance. . . . . .6:50  9. Les Filles Du Vent . .4:33 10. Anamorphose. . . . . .4:30

Le Temps Suspendu was released just a year before Empreintes. That record is still a brilliant piece of ambient music. The same tension and wonderful moods are to be found on this sequel Empreintes.
But, Ab Ovo succeeded again in producing an interesting album that has a face of its own. Only when listening more closely to Empreintes you will discover the subtle but very evident differences with their previous work.
Most clear are the more playful elements. Examples of this are ‘Night Is My Time’ and ‘Stella Maris’. Also at times Ab Ovo seems to sound more organic as before, like on ‘Les Filels Du Vent’.
Empreintes is just a very good album that will get you in a dreamlike state immediately.

this is the second release of the french ab ovo with ant-zen. this is an album which slowly reveals it's secrets. starting with the first listening it all sounds nice, yet after some more listenings the variation in rhythms and sound colours starts to unfold itself. this is where you get addicted to the abstract details and notice the quality of this album. the cd plays with moods and musicwise consists of an industrial variation on idm and ambient. there are excerpts from triphop and there are a lot of samples, however sparse synths and rhythms are used moreover. despite the edge in the music it nowhere is confronting or harsh, so the ambient nature of the album is preserved very well. sometimes it even hints towards filmmusic, but i mean this more regarding modesty in musical content than in actual shape of the music itself. the album has many melancholic sounds and appears to be introispective rather than crying out loud for attention, yet a lot is happening here and this is a recommendation for fans of electronic music. somehow it reminds me of biosphere and boards of canada when listening to ab ovo, but this is a comparison in atmosphere, not actual musical content. this is a very beautiful album. ~ by teknoir, gothtronic

SPOILER!

CODE Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008 EAC extraction logfile from 11. October 2008, 17:03 Ab Ovo / Empreintes Used drive  : HL-DT-STRW/DVD GCC-4241N  Adapter: 1  ID: 0 Read mode              : Secure Utilize accurate stream : Yes Defeat audio cache      : Yes Make use of C2 pointers : No Read offset correction                      : 102 Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out          : No Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes Delete leading and trailing silent blocks  : No Null samples used in CRC calculations      : Yes Used interface                              : Installed external ASPI interface Used output format              : User Defined Encoder Selected bitrate                : 768 kBit/s Quality                        : High Add ID3 tag                    : No Command line compressor        : C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\wavpack.exe Additional command line options : -hmxd -w "GENRE=%m" -w "DATE=%y" -w "COMMENT=Released by a-one" %s %d TOC of the extracted CD     Track |  Start  |  Length  | Start sector | End sector     ---------------------------------------------------------         1  |  0:00.00 |  6:15.72 |        0    |    28196          2  |  6:15.72 |  3:18.36 |    28197    |    43082          3  |  9:34.33 |  6:23.18 |    43083    |    71825          4  | 15:57.51 |  4:20.58 |    71826    |    91383          5  | 20:18.34 |  4:12.06 |    91384    |  110289          6  | 24:30.40 |  6:34.61 |    110290    |  139900          7  | 31:05.26 |  3:05.10 |    139901    |  153785          8  | 34:10.36 |  6:50.30 |    153786    |  184565          9  | 41:00.66 |  4:33.04 |    184566    |  205044        10  | 45:33.70 |  4:30.24 |    205045    |  225318  Range status and errors Selected range     Filename C:\Rips\Ab Ovo - Empreintes.wav     Peak level 96.6 %     Range quality 100.0 %     Test CRC BEDBA1C8     Copy CRC BEDBA1C8     Copy OK No errors occurred End of status report

SPOILER!

CODE REM GENRE "IDM, Ambient" REM DATE 2005 REM DISCID 8D0BBC0A REM COMMENT "ExactAudioCopy v0.99pb4" PERFORMER "Ab Ovo" TITLE "Empreintes" FILE "Ab Ovo - Empreintes.wv" WAVE   TRACK 01 AUDIO     TITLE "Maelstrom"     PERFORMER "Ab Ovo"     INDEX 01 00:00:00   TRACK 02 AUDIO     TITLE "Deep"     PERFORMER "Ab Ovo"     INDEX 01 06:15:72   TRACK 03 AUDIO     TITLE "Egregore"     PERFORMER "Ab Ovo"     INDEX 01 09:34:33   TRACK 04 AUDIO     TITLE "Night Is My Time"     PERFORMER "Ab Ovo"     INDEX 01 15:57:51   TRACK 05 AUDIO     TITLE "Nocturlabe"     PERFORMER "Ab Ovo"     INDEX 01 20:18:34   TRACK 06 AUDIO     TITLE "Inner Space"     PERFORMER "Ab Ovo"     INDEX 01 24:30:40   TRACK 07 AUDIO     TITLE "Stella Maris"     PERFORMER "Ab Ovo"     INDEX 01 31:05:26   TRACK 08 AUDIO     TITLE "Descendance"     PERFORMER "Ab Ovo"     INDEX 01 34:10:36   TRACK 09 AUDIO     TITLE "Les Filles Du Vent"     PERFORMER "Ab Ovo"     INDEX 01 41:00:66   TRACK 10 AUDIO     TITLE "Anamorphose"     PERFORMER "Ab Ovo"     INDEX 01 45:33:70