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from Vital e-magazine from the Staalplaat office [Number 318 - Week 15/2002]
written by Frans de Waard
to subscribe to Vital go here + email = vital@staalplaat.com
360 DEGREES (CD by The Foundry)
This is a compilation that is based upon a story, or rather a story fragment, which is divided in various episodes. Each episode gets a piece of music by eight different musicians and also there are six interpolations between the pieces. The musical styles covered here are ambient in its various forms. Be it from straight down washes of synths to more rhythmical work and glitches. In the first area we find labelbands such as Rhomb, eM and Jonathan Hughes, who both proof not be any different from any of the best works on Hypnos (who are co-releasing this CD). High Skies (aka Mat Jarvis, who worked as Gas on the Em:t label, who remembers them??) and Mark van Hoen's collaboration with Seofon are both in the more beat oriented areas, but both stay firmly (and luckily) away from techno music. Sketch and Kim Cascone operate more in the glitch areas, but that's of course just a term. They too operate very much from an ambient background, they just seem to be using a different thing to come to the same conclusion.
The interpolations cross fade tracks in and out, which give this album a really nice flow. Up to track six I thought I was still listening to the first track. It didn't seem to me that I was playing a compilation. Nice ambient compilation, even when you don't pay any attention to the story, like I did. Nothing new or spectacular, but really a nice listen. (FdW)
Address: www.foundrysite.com