MORPHEUS MUSIC REVIEWS

Chilled-out beats and strong basses carrying ambient layers and buoyant, cycling synth melodies. This is primarily a smooth, electronic, instrumental album, where scattered ethereal voice samples appear throughout, sometimes in the form of a dreamy female or male voice uttering various cosmic musings. The album cultivates a programmed sound as opposed to that of 'live' instrumentation, with burbling sequences and bright spiralling leads. The bass lines occasionally venture into rolling dub and ethnic elements such as tablas enrich the catchy rhythms that energise most tracks.

An ethereal and sanguine tone is set throughout Freedom Star. Water drops and synth sweeps interweave vocal waves that aim to expand the mind suggesting "We are all connected". There are bird sounds and subtle ethnic mouthings, plenty of echoes and reverb interspersed with a variety of the special sound effects that todays music technology creates so well. The mood is consistently (but not repetitively) downtempo and serene with an optimistic warmth.

MORPHEUS MUSIC REVIEWS

Melodic, floating and rhythmic electronic ambience. Drifted Into Deeper Lands is well titled since the delicate, meandering structures, lightly pulsing cycles and sparse melodies really do tend to carry the listener to places elsewhere. The rhythms created by sequencers and programmed percussion are on most tracks in no hurry to appear and in places the beats are so soft as to barely disturb the liquid surface of the music. Repeating, evolving patterns gently revolve forming differing thicknesses of sound, shifting densities and ethereal cloud masses from among which subtle themes emerge and disperse.

Ever so slightly dark, expansive, immersive - the tone is serious and often quite beautiful. There are tribal suggestions in the percussive elements such as rainsticks and dull thudding drums. Effective use of echo and reverb bring a feeling of distance and scale whilst fragile electronic murmurings and warping dissonant undertones produce an appealing sense of the organic.

Six lengthy tracks ranging from 7.05 to the 13.58 title track make up this moving, atmospheric collection. Along with writer/performer Gregory T. Kyryluk, Guitarist Jeff Pearce is credited with 'ambient guitar atmospherics on the tracks "Awakening" and "Another Time... Another Place". The pieces on this album are all serene ambient soundscapes with well-matched airy grooves and absorbing spacey resonance. The long introductions and leisurely developments will have you imperceptibly wandering off so that when you look back your starting point has gone and you're quite lost.

MORPHEUS MUSIC REVIEWS

Sparse, extended ambient guitar atmospheres. Lush with reverbs, harmonisers and delays Steve Roach explores the guitar, fretless bass and Ebow in real time arrangements that were all created in the depths of night. Here are seven inter-related pieces that unfurl and curl slowly in sustained, lonely drones and foreboding wafts of sounds.

The mood on Midnight Moon is somewhat desolate and mournful. These intense pieces seem to wrap subtle, keening strands of phosphorescent sound around the listener, beguiling, lulling him into submissive acceptance. Although the tracks are quite minimal, they are yet powerful and absorbing - desolate, hazy environments that are restful and inviting yet never quite allow the listener to fully shake off a sense of uneasiness.

Incredibly Steve had not really played the guitar before this album - in an interview with Ambientrance he said "My approach was really just feeling my way around it with intuition and open intentions. I had nothing to go on but pure feeling and what sounded right to me in my own space. It was a very personal process, drawing the direct experience of one moment feeding the next." This intuitive exploration of sound through a new instrument is evident in the truly peculiar sound of the album - like something alive and breathing in the darkness, the music wells up in leisurely swirling harmony, forms an individuality, basks in the beauty of its existence and drifts away.

MORPHEUS MUSIC REVIEWS

Environmental ambient guitar zones, employing live looping and bathed in sustaining effects. Steve again feels his way around the stratocaster guitar and Ebow, although you could be forgiven for thinking that these sounds could never have come from such familiar sources. Pieces generally drift gradually into hearing like the front of a storm cloud - at times rumbling with depth, at others luminous with silvered edges. One track - Spirit Moves - has a gentle rhythmic underpinning that feels organic and vaguely tribal, in time this dissipates leaving the sound currents floating alone growing imperceptibly fainter, with less movement and fading so very slowly.

More relaxing than the darker Midnight Moon that was created around the same time, this ethereal collection of restless drones and shadowy swells has moments of intensely delicate beauty. Like shafts of moonlight on the surface of something huge below water Streams and Currents is in constant flux, looming into close proximity and then meandering far and remote heavy with distance.

Six solo pieces that are closely connected in nature to Midnight Moon although here perhaps more sonically crafted and developed. You can almost picture Steve heavily lost in sound, exploring, experiencing the guitar - letting the notes form and lead him where they will. The masterful use of space makes you conscious of the role of silence, appreciative of quietness as an element of sound - noticing that the sleeve directs "created for low volume continuous playback". These two albums are the original charts from which such diverse later journeys as Darkest Before Dawn, Mystic Chords and Sacred Spaces and Fever Dreams would emerge.

Intimate ambient minimalists that enjoy music that flows directly from the musician's subconscious to your imagination. If you enjoy ephemeral flowing sound zones drawn out in a way that you are not used to hearing from a guitar - try Streams and Currents. If you want a warmer Midnight Moon, this is for you.

MORPHEUS MUSIC REVIEWS

Light, breezy and ephemeral yet rooted and solid, [ Memory Shell ] has all the melancholy, wistfulness of a deserted beach. Undulating soundscapes and flickering, skittering beats are adorned with hanging shells, electronic hisses, radio interference and lonely voices. There are plenty of beatless interludes and chilled airy grooves among passages where pulsing basses and bright beats pump with occasional tribal hits and sampled noise.

Twelve tracks of classy electronic ambient trance created by Vincent Villuis with Mahiane (aka Sunbeam) assisting with composition and storytelling and ethereal vocals by Pascale Auffret (Cox 6, Hum drum Drama, Mister O). The cycling sequencers, phat basses and programmed grooves associated with the euro-dance scene are all present, yet applied subtly like watercolour layers - [ Memory Shell ] is at its best when allowed to wander farthest into the haziness of ambience and atmosphere. Production is, as expected, flawless and crystal clear with mastering credited to Huby Sea.

This is a CD for lovers of electronic chillout; music for the early morning (either before or after sleep). If you enjoyed H.U.V.A. Network, Vincent was a major contributor to that project and if anything [ Memory Shell ] exceeds Distances in many areas. This is surely one of 2004's best albums of the genre - don't miss this one.

MORPHEUS MUSIC REVIEWS

An effective mixture of trip-hop, brooding electronica and dark pop all strung together with Christa Belle's low-key ethereal vocals. Although produced by a duo, Hungry Lucy go for the feel of a band rather than a programmed computer construct. This album is primarily a collection of songs - the musical structures have wide variety and strength, but it is the vocal narrative that carries the listener along. Tracks range from simple piano and voice arrangements to rich synthetic darkwave and virtual guitar driven downtempo.

Melancholy songs of abandonment, loss, deception and oppression tell a story that binds individual tracks together as united whole. The emotional vocals have a flawed beauty that fittingly emphasises the vulnerable quality of the lyrics. War-N Harrison creates a dramatic backdrop of programmed percussion, synth and piano lines, moody strings, guitars and the occasional world sound.

Seventeen tracks of fairly wide ranging musical styles that nonetheless gel comfortably. Along with the Hungry Lucy originals, To Kill A King features four remixes: we have the F9 Mixes of The Chase and Shine, the Null Device Mix of You Are and the TriggerI0D Mix of To Kill a King. These four additional pieces retain Hungry Lucy's gothic aesthetic whilst upping the tempo into the electro-dancefloor zone.