Articles
2015 Top 10s & 20s
Roomful Of Teeth

Albums
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David Arend
Artificial Intelligence
Nimrod Borenstein
Randal Collier-Ford
Deadbeat
Julien Demoulin
Denki Udon
R. Nathaniel Dett
Dwiki Dharmawan
Yair Etziony
Marina Fages
Francesco Di Fiore
Flowers for Bodysnatchers
From the Mouth of the Sun
Goldmund
Markus Guentner
Momenta Quartet
Music Komite
North Atlantic Explorers
Ontal
Prequel Tapes
Saffronkeira
Slivovitz
Alessandro Stella
Subheim
Swarm Intelligence
Robert Scott Thompson
Triac
Trigg & Gusset
Aino Tytti
Andy Vaz
We Mythical Kings
Sebastian Zangar

Compilations / Mixes / Remixes / Reissues
Dub Phizix
Stacey Pullen
Replicants
A Simple Procedure
Tour De Traum X

EPs / Cassettes / DVDs / Mini-Albums / Singles
Ant'lrd
Big Phone
Great Panoptique Winter
Hydro
Mtwn
Mute Forest
Selaroda
Thee Koukouvaya
Joshua Van Tassel

Randal Collier-Ford: Remnants
Cryo Chamber

Whilst listening to Remnants, I found myself musing about how excellent a candidate Randal Collier-Ford would be for any number of film soundtrack assignments. But almost immediately upon doing so I checked myself in realizing that pieces of such evocative character don't require visuals: Collier-Ford's settings are so visually suggestive, listening to them amounts to a complete audio-visual experience. The Oregon-based sound artist has been operating in the Dark Ambient field since 2012, and on this second Cryo Chamber outing he arms ten grandiose visions with image-generating titles such as “Suspension of Icarus” and “Decaying Sun,” evoking apocalyptic impressions, spiritual entities, and mythological archetypes as he does so.

“Monument” immediately announces that Remnants will be less focused on ambient-drone soundscaping and more on atmospheric sound design. A richly cinematic soundworld is created, one painstakingly assembled by Collier-Ford and arranged with respect to evocative power to maximum effect. The closing “Revelations” aside, the pieces aren't musical in the conventional sense, though musical elements are present in more or less fragmented form; Collier-Ford clearly has a different goal in mind, the idea presumably being to place the listener within a landscape generated via the arrangement of disparate sound elements. The precise location of the outdoors setting conjured in “Horns of Eden” isn't clear, for instance, but wherever it is it's one infused with gloom and desolation. “Remnants,” on the other hand, appears to be situated near a building, given the presence of creaking doors, yet shoveling noises and the sounds of someone trudging through a rumbling, haunted site clearly locates us outside, too.

December 2015