Upon first listening to Marc Manning and Yann Novak’s collaborative endeavor cleverly titled "Pairings," I thought to myself, "this is the soundtrack to some futuristic themed ride at Disney’s EPOCT center." And you know the rides I’m talking about, the one’s that depict some utopian and unrealistically peaceful Buck Rogers-esue future with pod shaped spaceship cars, robot housekeepers, television phones, but I digress. The point is that the first two tracks were generic, uninspired, and vapid. However, things take a significant turn for the better starting with track 3 and exponentially improve thereafter. "Pairing 2 pt. 2" is a brilliant matching of droning electronic noise and subtle, yet strategically placed acoustic guitar patterns and ethereal string orchestrations. This general pattern continues on "Pairing 3 pt. 1 which gets slightly more complex with manipulated flamenco guitar samples and richer sound textures that seamlessly culminates with the album’s closing track "Paring 3 pt. 2 which is a 10 minute piece that crescendos between lush and layered ambient textures and unsettling silence. They key element of these three tracks is that they are thoughtfully and tastefully composed to the extent that it manages to sound simplistic and spacious when there is in fact quite a lot going on musically. With the exception of the two opening tracks, which I already discussed ad nauseum, "Pairings," (which I don’t think is cleverly titled in case you didn’t pick up the sarcasm) is a very interesting album that works and transcends beyond your run of the mill drone music which I’m sure was developed by the CIA for the sake of getting information from terrorists until they realized that Metallica works much better.