Pete Namlook & Bill Laswell Outland

Here we have another Ambient World re-issue of an old respected FAX label release. Deep growling drones get this sixty two minute epic underway. It really sounds like the beast from the deep or some alien from outer space. Its dark ambient picture music of the very highest order. There's something out there to get you in every dark corner. In the ninth minute extra detail is added in the form of some faint vocal effects with a slight metallic quality to them giving a brighter edge to the sonic landscape. Ghostly wails are heard at about the fifteen minute mark making the whole proceedings seem even spookier. Around the eighteenth minute more detail starts to be added , oh so slowly. Its as if we are entering some subtly different area of space, the atmosphere is still dark but things seem sparser and maybe slightly less threatening.

Each sound is used carefully and given plenty of space for full effect. By the twenty second minute there is quite a lot of ebb and flow in the underlying pads and it is just after this point that the first actual notes / loop / sequence whatever you like to call them start to form. Its wonderful and swirling causing all sorts of psychedelic pictures to form in the mind- well out there man! This really is wonderful, put a match to the incense and start the trippy light show. Cosmic drones become more intense. By about the fortieth minute we have returned to floating on a sea of deep pads. A mournful sound of a cello (similar style to Wolfgang Tiepold on Shulze albums) now becomes the main focus. This mixes with some heavily processed vocal effects, the pads become even deeper and more cosmic and the cello departs all too quickly for my taste though the thick sounds that remain are still extremely impressive. The processed 'vocal' pads return very strongly at about the forty eighth minute like some strange spectres who will haunt your player with increasing severity for about the next eight minutes then we return to the darkest reaches of the cosmos for about the last six minutes with the sound of alien breath just over your shoulder.