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"String and Drone Sketches and Phases" is only $10.00CAN plus taxes and mailing costs!

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Cymbl "Sring and Drone Sketches and Phases"
Effectively creates deep dark drones both evocative and inspiring.

A fresh, exciting and sublime set of sonic mantras from the mind of sound sculptor Richard Baker. String & Drone... is a wonderful excursion in sound with classical orchestral strings and guitar samples that are looped and stretched to form vast, deep pools of sound. The music is captivating and heady, swirling over and over, inspiring dizziness from pieces like "Drone Sweet Drone" and "Ecloguing". There are also intense and suspenseful pieces like "One Drone 4" I would call the experimental-electronic anthem of the year. These repetitions and sustained notes are saturated in overtones, often - but not always dark, making up the character of the album. Richard works at his tones like a monk rubbing at his prayer beads, repeating his "Phases" until a form of transcendence is achieved. The closing track is a cyclone of orchestral strings, "Repetition Allows Insight Into the Movement Behind" is not unlike an unresolved question to a Zen problem, a perfect ending. Rich in smooth textures with creative manipulation of sound sources, Cymbl is a very satisfying sound project.

I. Khider - http://www.exclaim.ca/

Richard Baker's music, released under the Cymbl pseudonym, is very intense and beautiful even if built upon pretty simple elements. The main goal of Baker is creating undulating superimposing droning soundscapes, mostly via pre-existing material, be it a string chord, a low frequency vibration, an harmonic slow change. This lets you drown in a blissing state, waiting for a change that never comes - and in the end you're happy it doesn't. You can use Cymbl's music both as active listening, in headphones or sitting in front of monitors, or as ambient music at low volume: the result is excellent in both settings. Several parts of this material evoked memories of the most repetitive Zoviet France fragments and also certain aspects of Christoph Heemann's solo albums; lovers of those areas of sound exploration will surely appreciate Baker's panoramas.

touching extremes

"String and Drone Sketches and Phases" is an excellent introduction to Cymbl, the dark ambient side project of percussionist Richard Baker of ARC. Elegant and economical in its use of sound, Cymbl very effectively creates some very deep, very dark drones that are both evocative and inspiring. While percussion is largely absent from the disc, Baker's percussive sensibilities are still apparent in his uses of both silences and the rhythmic pulse of various tones used, giving songs like Scar Star and Drone Sweet Drone a certain propulsive motion. Other songs like Gears of the Universe revel in the beauty of industry, using pneumatic machinery as a counterpoint to the rise and fall of a looping drone. A fascinating listen.

rik - ping things