(Contact Killer Records 2006)
Loren Dent- Empires and Milk
(Contact Killer Records 2006)
From Aural Innovations #36 (May 2007)
It is like sinking a long distance down through water. Under and deeper, struggling
to breath, feeling the other side beckoning you to breath, if only you would
breath!
Gasping and gulping water you realize that the breath of life does not sustain
the eternal, and in turn find that in release from such thought it has made
one truly alive at last.
Well?
Well, What? It is just emotion changing sound into words. Emotion changing sound
into words!
This is a definite headphone album. Spacey. Ambient. Ethereal. Chaotic in places,
yet all such paths are justified in the course of their elaborate journey. Which
I may add is a long one, but it is worth it for the experimentation and the
concept nature of the CD, even though it may all be meaningless to some.
It is in short a soundtrack sounding CD. Mainly residing upon long drawn out
passages of droning sounds, with occasional massive chord and emotion build
up. It is sad and happy. It is uplifting and depressing. Jump in but also beware
you may not last the course as it is for an acquired taste, as is with all sound
experimentation …
On the whole the enchanting jiggery pokery is very much keyboard and synthesizer
driven in essence, yet it also motions and flows throughout the 15 tracks with
a sort of string orchestrated sound to it.
It is sort of haunting and slightly somber in places, and in fact it is not
something that I would advise to play to get the party started, so to speak!
I think you may find that it would probably upset the crowd!
Thinking along these lines, and also in the genre of soundscape creation. I
can say that I hear elements of Tangerine Dream that have been positively taken
forward and twisted with the likes of Vangelis and Robert Fripp to form the
grounds of what Empires of Milk is about.
It is not a million miles away from all the aforementioned artists but likewise
it does have its own sound, which by the way is well produced and very well
balanced with highs and lows in allthe right places. And I should add that it
certainly takes the listener somewhere.
Where? That is wherever you want to go! In the words of Funkadelic, ‘Free
your mind and your ass will follow!’
For more info visit the band's web site at: www.lorendent.com
Visit the Contract Killers Records web site at: www.contactkillersrecords.com
Reviewed by Albert Pollard