SanRenSei -- Reviews

Reviews of "Ceremony"

This music ambience is crafted with decidedly gloomy sensibilities, imbuing the soundscape with a tension that is often spooky and foreboding. Electronic sounds chitter at the perifery of more conventional drones, softly squealing punctuations that inject a sense of flickering lights to the seething darkness. Traditional piano contributes a periodic familiarity to these murky textures. Guitar sounds can be discerned amid a growling foundation of textural twilight. There are times when the processed guitar becomes almost bestial (although remaining unagressive), grinding like a horde of remote wasps. Sampson's ethereal voice floats like a specter through this shadowy abyss, providing a connection to the landof the living with its mortal origins, although the electronic treatments do tend to undermine that organic association. This dark version of ambience is refreshing. So many ambient musicians seek to lull the audience into introspection, while this music accomplishes a subtle agitation that is thoroughly nocturnal without actively striving to be frightening.

Matt Howarth -- Sonic Curiosity



Jeff Sampson and Sean Carroll, who are the ethereal-ambient duo Embracing the Glass, team up with Brain Goodhue (Collision Sect) for this project characterized by muted drones and out-of-whack noises. This trio brings out of one another a nervous, askew darkness. Hiss and fuzz, washes of bleak grey tones, low-end runbling, off-center electronics, and sporadic noises paint abysmal, inescapable catacombs. The entire album conveys a great deal of despair-filled blackness, with other hues, sickly and infected, seeping through. Sampson's vocals in "It's a Hollow Halo" evoke the distant beaconing light of a dying angel, hopelessly unreachable. There's nothing quite like both Embracing the Glass and Collision Sect, just like there's nothing quite like them together.

Ryan Wynns -- From Dust



Three players (keyboard synths + voices, guitar synths and hardware sequencer) contribute to the six pieces herein, which fall squarely into the low key floating ambient electro-acoustic zone. The ever-present low frequency bassy drones are a good workout for the subwoofer (but only if you crank the volume), and whatever sounds occur in the higher registers (faint voices, intermittent synth blasts, percussive sounds and other low voltage sonic events) are particularly understated, almost subliminal. To make matters even more understated, the entire disc seems to be recorded at a very low volume level. At times it gets so quiet that the listener may not even be aware that the disc is playing – ambient sound from other sources may conceal it. The whole mood is dark, foreboding and intentionally obscured. Like all good floating ambient music Ceremony drifts effortlessly and floats in a sort of dreamlike space between conscious states over its 40 minutes, trance-like and hypnotic as it drifts deeper and deeper into a dark sonic void. While there are many other examples of this style that I’ve found to be far more engaging and imaginative, SanRenSei has nonetheless produced a solid debut.

Peter Thelen -- Expose




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