| Artist: Ethan Rose Album: Oaks Released: 27 January 2009 |   |
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Ethan Rose manufactures lovley Ambient Music on his computer. The CD Oaks (37'55") is the result of his skill and talent in manipulating the unlikeliest of instruments into vignettes of tone collage. By truncating his samples, reversing or looping them, stretching, adding effects and all other manner of digital rearrangement, Rose realizes wistful music rendered out of sounds played on an old skating rink pipe organ. Quietly complex, Oaks presents different moods on its eight tracks - which compare favorably to textural works by Brian Eno and The Aphex Twin, yet maintain a distinctive profile. Pieces which layer metallic chiming and rumbling bass beneath a grainy digital glow drift in contrast to this album's more somber and open atmospheric compositions. Crystalline timbres ring between plunking sonic droplets in a fascinating arrangement of pleasant harmonies and counter drifting forms. The subtle movement, gradual transition and fragile growth found in Rose's work transcends sleep-inducement and keeps us interested in listening. Although the process seems very experimental, the resulting music is easy and consonant - and always delivered as if in intimate, personal contact with the listener.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 23 April 2009 | |
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