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review by Dene Bebbington Oxana is Pete Kelly's (the man behind Igneous Flame) second ambient album, and in a sense it feels like a follow-up to Tolmon because it explores similar sonic territory. Using processed guitar as the main instrument the result is a unique and uncluttered sound that combines elements of drone and drifting ambience to create what I'd describe as a musical sculpture. Like Tolmon, the album comprises many discrete tracks (fourteen in this case) which nonetheless combine to make up a holistic aural experience, indeed, it's like the sonic equivalent of looking at, and feeling, an interesting sculpture from various angles and perspectives. Appropriately, the album opens with a short track called "Formless", since the music generally is formless as various washes and drones blow across the soundscape as amorphous and shifting clouds of sound. The processed guitar comes across to me somewhat like brushed steel in sound - it often has a metallic quality but is also smooth, and upon closer inspection the texture isn't perfectly homogenous. This gives Oxana an organic and otherworldy quality that can take one's imagination to various realms, to name a few: "Glacia-Tor" made me think of the slow but inexorable sliding movements of glaciers, "Isolder" is like being in a misty forest where ghost-like entities are hinted at but not quite seen, "Prismatic" is warm and has a sense of yearning with shimmering washes, and "Lost at Sea" (which contains excerpts from a BBC Radio Four shipping forecast) conveys a feeling of disquiet one would have if really lost at sea - especially at night. If comparisons were to be made then I'd mention Jeff Pearce or Diatonis for the stretched out sounds generated from guitar, and Matthew Florianz for the nearly seamless combining of drone and drifts. Igneous Flame is carving out a niche of minimalist ambient music that should appeal to afficionados who prefer the more abstract end of the ambient spectrum. It's a splendid addition to the genre, giving the careful listener a lot of satisfaction like any good work of art should. |
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