The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.
Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.
Reminds me of netlabel music, indulgences and all.
Seems these reviews are now so visible on Google, I have artists sending me Bandcamp codes for my consideration because of them. Neat! In credit to Graham, the soul behind all this silent music, I took him up on it precisely because the email I got wasn't some indiscriminate mail merge template, just a guy hoping I'd check out his stuff. Sure thing! Forward Ether is quite the oddball chillout record; one need only look at the list of instruments on the rainbow insert, including a PS2 running Magix Music Maker, for that. As a whole, it gets bogged down by the shards of overly-short, unfinished tracks in its running order, but at its best, it's evocative, its kaleidoscope of sounds zonked and full of character when in focus and perfectly mixed and meshed when out of it.
Silent Music traffics in big hip-hop beats, windswept pads, stoner flutes, slinky fingerstyle bass and buzzing radiator synthbass, and enough rotor cabinet ringing and stereo echoes to throw your ear off. Songs like "Maple Syrup Snowflakes" and "Bridge Premise" play like a charcuterie board of some of chillout's finest, a bit of C418 here, a bit of RJD2 there. Given enough space, Graham knows how to build up and take a track down pretty expertly, like on the stanky "Dysgraphic Journalist" or the dissonant, clanging closer "Technical Support". That makes all its under-a-minute unfinished squib tracks, "Cartwheel Planets" and "Three-Colour Square" and "I Want to Buy a Paper Shredder", all the more unfortunate. You can only hope songs like these either get finished or cut outright for Silent Music's next, but if you're into weird sounds, if your average chillout playlist has gotten passe, Forward Ether delivers the goods.
(Thank you for the request, Graham! I will be checking out more of what you get up to for sure.)
| Essential: | Quintessential: | Non-Essential: | Rating: |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Maple Syrup Snowflakes", "Dysgraphic Journalist", "Technical Support" | "Irreducible Complexity" | "Cartwheel Planets" |  |
| Download from Silent Music's Bandcamp | |||
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