REVIEWS reviews...... sounds...... pictures...... words...... links...... info written by Mark Teppo for Ear Pollution e-zine (issue 3.04 April 2001) http://www.earpollution.com/vol3/apr01/album/album.htm#foundry The Foundry Mote The Foundry label owner, Michael Bentley, has taken an interesting approach to celebrating the first few years of his label's existence with the sixth release on the label. Titled Mote, it is a sonic exploration of the terrain that he and other artists represented on the label have explored. It is a roadmap, so to speak, of where the label has been, giving pointers as well to where the label is headed. Mote is an engrossing ambient excursion that is more than just your standard label sampler. Mote begins with the self-titled track that had its genesis in a Twilight Zone-type phone call where Michael found himself on the receiving end. Not much more than a minute, it is a short-wave transmission from a microscopic galaxy, hinting at rhythms and textures. Bentley begins "The Bridge" with a squelchy reply before smoothing into longer drones with languorous violin melodies and overtones (ably supplied by Susan Worland) weaving through the sprawling mist generated by the electronic tones. The squelchy burst transmission pops in and out--snarling with heavily agitated electrons in more than one instance--before everything fades into the liquid tones of "Subaqua." This track sets the tone for the rest of the disc--smooth, rolling, blissful ambient tracks that gracefully slip past your screens. There's the crystallized atmospheres of "Reverie," the tone melodies of "Occluded Forms" that is strikingly reminiscent of Harold Budd's work with the Cocteau Twins (the sublime The Moon and the Melodies from 1986), and gentle melodies and little drifts of whistling static that turn one's eyes towards the heavens in "Shoals of Stars." Echoes swirl with aquatic fervor in "In the Drift" while "Islands of Sleep" is flush with deep swells and rhythmic pulses. "Epilogue (For Those Who Came Before)" is a stunning conclusion of drifts and beats that speaks so succinctly of the previous hour of music and the previous thirty years of ambient constructions, while still keeping an open ear towards the future. A mote may modestly be just a small particle, but the efforts here of Michael Bentley and Nathan Kreisberg (eM and Rhomb, respectively) demonstrate able ability to make the small and slight so memorable in its passage.