John Palmer The Source

If you like the stuff released on the Fathom label or probably even more appropriately Mirage then this is for you. It is also a bit like Steve Roach’s new album ‘Slow Heat’ but with ten tracks giving different atmospheres rather than just one seventy minute sound collage. We open with the title track which makes use of faint bird sounds and a gentle stream which are added to by a piano lead line full of echo. All is at peace as the mind is gently stimulated into visions of Eden. ‘Between the Sun and the Moon’ is basically a haunting lead line over a drone backing. It is very simple but effective, lasting just three minutes but really that is perfect. It says what it has to then allows us to move on to ‘Land of Shadows’. This is a very spooky piece, its atmospherics being created by a number of metallic drones very quietly moving over each other. Great use is made of space leaving the imagination to fill in the detail.

‘Sunlight Drifting 1’, ‘Sunlight Drifting 2’ and ‘Milkbottles that Move in the Night’ (great title) are in a similar vein and if anything the ‘Slow Heat’ comparison becomes even more relevant and especially on ‘Milkbottles’ Stephen Bacchus in ambient mood comes to mind. ‘The Void’ is even more subtle with the tapestry of sound pulsating and ever drifting in a very delicate way. It is as if there is a breeze causing very faint undulations over a pond which the slightest disturbance would wreck. ‘A Wheel of Stars’ is by far the longest track at twenty minutes and as on the previous number the words that come to mind are subtlety and fragility. ‘In Lonely Hours’ sounds like a duet between tubular bells and the chimes from a cuckoo clock. Very weird and certainly different to everything else on the album. ‘Cat Songs.....’ rounds off the album with very strange processed sounds of said moggy, as if it is crying from the bottom of a well, with loads of reverb added for good measure. It lasts for just over a minute but maintains the ominous, eerie feeling that permeates the whole album. (DL)

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