Articles
Spotlight 15
Favourite Labels 2014

Albums
Poppy Ackroyd + Lumen
Avec le soleil sortant ...
Balmorhea
Brooklyn Rider
bvdub
Cern
Del Sol String Quartet
Nick Gill
Stefan Goldmann
Hammock
Chihei Hatakeyama
Robert Honstein
Jonas Kopp
David Lackner
Last Ex
Neil Leonard
Little Phrase
The Mark Lomax Trio
LA Percussion Quartet
Manual
Near The Parenthesis
Newman and Cox
Nuage
Pan & Me
Bobby Previte
Marc Sabat
Hein Schoer
Wadada Leo Smith
SPC ECO
Subotika
Tape
Templeton + Armstrong
Ken Thomson
Ulterior Motive
Joris Voorn
Andrew Weathers
Ezra Weiss Sextet
Stefan Wesolowski
Keith Worthy

Compilations / Mixes
Aphelion
EPM Selected Vol. 3
Universal Quantifier

EPs / Cassettes / Mini-Albums / Singles
Balmorhea
Blu Mar Ten
Michael Jon Fink
Oceanic Triangulation
Northumbria and Famine
Total Science
Simon Whetham

Near The Parenthesis: Cloud.Not Mountain
n5MD

With Cloud.Not Mountain, San Francisco-based electronic musician Tim Arndt continues a relationship with n5MD that began in 2006 with the release of his second album and first for the label, Of Soft Construction. L'Eixample (2008), Music for the Forest Concourse (2010), and Japanese for Beginners (2011) followed, setting the stage for his latest, the forty-seven-minute Cloud.Not Mountain. The sound and style of his Near The Parenthesis project has naturally undergone a number of changes over the course of that eight-year stretch, though melody and texture have remained focal points throughout.

The changes in the case of the new release are multiple: an increased deployment of synthesizers, broken beat patterns, and blurry textural treatments. Melody is still key but the sound design within which it appears has changed since the last album. That's especially apparent in the second piece, “Virga,” when he embeds simple electric piano figures within a dense field of shoegaze-like guitar washes, fragmented beats, and crystalline synth textures. In similar manner, the title track undergirds its chiming keyboard melodies with broken beat patterns that lurch and stumble.

The warm splendour of “Neume” is so soothing the track begins to feel like Arndt's take on Windham Hill-styled New Age. Here and elsewhere, the producer entices the listener with the promise of a retreat free of turbulence and turmoil. More dynamic by comparison is “Conductor,” which, breezy in flow, uplifting in spirit, and luscious in presentation, might be the album's strongest cut.

Admittedly there's a potential danger in emphasizing understatement and restraint to the degree that Arndt does on this new collection: like prototypical ambient material, the impact of the album's tracks is subtle, at times subliminal, and therefore easy to underappreciate. But with a little effort, the attentive listener begins to hear the artistry that Arndt brings to his bright, ethereal productions. With that in mind, one might be better to think of the ten pieces on Cloud.Not Mountain as moodscapes rather than instrumental songs.

November 2014