adam pacione
After several limited edition releases, Adam Pacione's official debut has reconciled me with that area of Ambient music that was booming at the beginning of the 90s, when people like Jeff Greinke or Vidna Obmana (both much more creative and original at that time) were reiterating Brian Eno's teachings and adding their own spicy ingredients in excellent albums like Greinke's Timbral Planes and Cities in Fog or the Belgian's Soundtrack vor Heet Aquarium with Hybryds. Pacione's Sisyphus is also a picture of a submerged world, beautiful at low volume on a sorrowful Sunday morning. The music remains pretty consonant throughout, as chains of consecutive looping melodies, unfinished watercolours and mourning soundtracks for desolate solitude – William Basinski's Disintegration Loops once again comes to mind – coil around a hazy, obfuscated aura of instrumental activity whose speed ranges from slow to totally immobile. The ingenuity of "Cicada Lullaby", as well as satisfying my love for summer insects, is a lesson in depth to other rocket scientists of the genre. A consistent and pleasing album.
sisyphus
(eeaoa023) CD
Adam Pacione’s debut album (following some beautiful limited edition CDRs) is Sisyphus, an organic and fluid collection of haunting ambience, brimming with warmth and emotion. The recordings have a contemplative, solitary air about them, and this is a stunningly gorgeous set - leading the listener through these sound-works in perfect succession, with each piece flowing effortlessly into the next.
Sisyphus has an aquatic or womblike feel, as if the composer were calmly observing and documenting his surroundings while completely submerged. And the weight of water has never been so meticulously described as within these sounds.
Much like the album’s mythical namesake, Sisyphus is largely concerned with repetition: Sounds and melodies are reiterated; Passages are looped with deliberate pacing. And there is beauty and ultimately reward to be found in these recurrences. The desired effect is flawlessly delivered, and the bliss of Sisyphus entangles.
Packaged inside two elegant printed sleeves of 100% recycled paper, this compact disc has been issued in an edition of 329 copies.
Track list:
- Massimo Ricci, Paris Transatlantic
Airy tones repeating and morphing. Reminiscent of William Basinksi or
recent albums by Vertonen and labelmate Colin Andrew Sheffield. Super
mellow and calming, but avoids the blandness of generic relaxation music
through its genuine solemn emotion. Harmonically dense, but more in the
manner of an Impressionist blur than muddy dissonance. His equipment
does seem a little bit overloaded, though. #7, with an electric bass
loop, is the most upbeat rhythmically and melodically. After this, the
albums shifts toward the uplifting side compared to the lonely solitude
of the earlier tracks. #10 is very static in parts, and rather
discomforting.
- Jacob Heule, Breakthrough in Grey Room
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