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review by Dene Bebbington This has got to be the ultimate, or somewhere near it, in drone-based albums; John seems to have followed Klaus Schulze's approach that more is better, and indeed it can be if it doesn't pass the point where more is too much. This second album by John (his debut was released under the name Laocoon) is partly based on time, hence the title which refers to the four tracks clocking in at eighteen minutes something each. I'd class it as occupying musical ground somewhere between the tonalities of Altara (by A. Produce/M. Griffin) and the long track minimalism found on Exuviae's Echoes in the Emptiness. To make the most of minimalist ambient music you really need a quiet environment for listening so that all the subtleties and textures can be appreciated, and this is no exception. The opening track "one" gets the album off to a nice start with light and dark drones shifting across the amorphous soundscape like electronic breezes. The mood then becomes a little heavier in "two" where the drones take on a fluttering quality, often a fast fluttering rather than a gentle one - like an electronic equivalent of how quickly a hummingbird flaps it wings. Moving on to "three" and subdued gong sounds give the piece a Tibetan quality. I thought it's almost like listening to a minimalist version of some tracks on David Parson's Himalaya. Finally, the album closes with "four" and by this time it's apparent that things won't sound significantly different from what's gone before. 4 at 18 is worth checking out by those who like the minimal end of the ambient music spectrum, though I believe you'd have to be a committed listener to sit through all eighteen minutes of each track. I think it would have worked better at four tracks of eight minutes each, but even so it's good as drone albums go. |
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