| Artist: Mike Griffin + Dave Fulton Album: Imprint Label: Hypnos | 
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"Please Identify" on Imprint opens the album with plaintive synth chords slowly alternating between keys. The piece leads the listener, twisting and turning, along an odd sonic route of complex drones, unique timbres and detuned sequencer tones. This is the auspicious opening to the second collaborative effort from Mike Griffin and Dave Fulton, an album attempting to satisfy the modern yearning for enigma.
The music on Imprint falls under the classification of Spacemusic and the duo demonstrates that there is no one way to realize music of this genre. Griffin + Fulton take all the ambiguities of the Spacemusic convention and streamline them into a totally distinctive and striking vision. This is not tepid new age bath music, nor is it a carbon-copy of the Berlin School - the aural specifications of Imprint cover vast stretches with tracks but no roads and triggers our imaginations to embrace the unknown. The dreamy imagery and blurry edges of "Imprint", the title track, is a journey with no map. Layers of electronic pads shift, phase and combine. This composition unfolds with both the serenity of twilight at dawn and the immensity of crossing the edge of the universe. "Thermoptic Disguise" is reminiscent of the '80's style of EM - after a brief amorphous introduction, a bouncing sequencer pattern emerges over which a restrained lead melody speaks of challanges met and beauty lost. With all their sonic pursuits, Mike Griffin + Dave Fulton attempt to map and then trap space - converting it into permanent pieces of data which can be released into your listening space; and it is with sound that their world comes into being. - Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 09 Oct 2002 | |