This new ambient album by Cass. opens with organ drones, sequences surfacing through their layered sustain like dawn breaking – like bucolic birdsong – unfolding, unhurriedly. Its harmonious hum, very very kosmische. Very Cluster, very Popol Vuh. To be honest, almost Orb-esque, but without the beats or the wacky baccy samples.
Snow Stills is a thoughtful, mindful, musical moment, its muted chords, a fanfare of calm. Its wistful whistles countered by synthesized sighs, and analogue animal cries. The repetition rising and falling like meditative yogini breath. Waling surfs on a sound like a treated gong – submerged, vibrating, deep underwater, sending out shockwaves in slow, sedate, pulses – washed by a choir-like chorus, and infinite guitar. On Dooley similar 6-string loops echo endlessly, recalling Christian Fennesz` possible finest hour, minus the glitch. The fragile, whisper thin, arrangement of Hey Sun? fashions a shimmering sonic cloud. Drifting on and on – like Brock Van Wey`s heartbroken masterpiece, `cept free of nostalgia and melancholy. Female Energy is an alien lullaby, a poem constructed from a Close Encounters tones, which also alludes to the most accessible bits of Eno & Lanois` amazing Apollo atmospheres. It even slips in some pedal steel. Laid back and listening I was asking myself is there anything, anything at all, wrong with drawing on these influences and only taking the prettiest bits?
Ambient Music For A Young Girl is available digitally via Bandcamp. The vinyl can be pre-ordered from the brilliant Basso, at The Growing Bin.