THE SAND RAYS
(For September 2021)
CDR CEIL051
When I woke up this morning, I looked at various releases waiting to be heard, and this one by The Sand Rays attracted my attention. It was the cover text that made me want to start the day with the music. "The sole sound source is a short accidental recording of a humidifier with a laptop's microphone. This release is remixed works in progress from upcoming eight-hour video for overnight use." The perfect piece of ambient music to start the day off, I thought. I wasn't wrong, but it is also not entirely what I hoped it would be. I expected a low humming, continuous affair. It was a bit like William Basinski would do (it was that time of the year to play a work from him this week). I understand that this work is a sort of remix of the proposed eight-hour work (intended for use with a video), which explains some of the more abrupt changes within the music. That sort of 'destroyed' the ambient feeling at times, but then, by and large, the whole piece still has very much that ambient quality. Somewhere around the seventeen-minute break, there is an abrupt change, when the music grows to quite a crescendo and then continuing with the same sort of sound, yet altered. When that fades out, the piece stays within the same slow-changing electronic field until the end. There is at first a slight ambient industrial feeling, the ventilation system of a big building. Still, over half an hour, the music deepens and becomes vague and watery, sounding very isolationist. I immensely enjoyed this piece of music, even when it wasn't quite what I expected, and yet it was right up my alley. I can't wait for the full version.
Frans de Waard