Swedish composer, visual artist and recording artist Leif Elggren has been active since the late 1970s and has become one of the most constantly surprising conceptual artists to work in the combined worlds of audio and visual. A writer, visual artist, stage performer & composer, he has many albums to his credits, both solo and with the Sons of God. This particular release was inspired by a Christmas past, when he was 12 years old (1962), and spent Christmas day at his family's country house, where there was a lot of snow. The immediate environment was only partially influential in this work; it was really brought about by his first viewing of the 1937 Frank Capra movie, "Lost Horizon" which obviously made a deep impression on Leif. Due to family worries about the weather that day their stay was cut short, and Leif did not see the whole movie until 24 years later (1986). Since then he says he has seen the film countless times, obviously making a making a big impression on him.

Both my one-sheet from No Part Of It and the text on the website for the album contain Leif's story in full, but I will not recount it all here, as it is extremely lengthy. If you are not familiar with the movie, it involves a revolutionary uprising which drives terrified Westerners to the airport in Baskul, China. The evacuation is organized by writer, soldier, and diplomat Robert Conway, before he is to return to the United Kingdom and become Foreign Secretary. He flies out with the last four evacuees, bound for Shanghai but the plane crashes deep i the Himalayas. The under-dressed (for the weather and terrain) Western survivors are rescued from death by fur-clad natives, and taken to a protected valley, a virginal place where the sun always shines and everything is all right. The enraptured Westerners, feeling happy and safe, look down over the wonderful place, a place called Shangri-La, a paradise. There's more to the story than that, but is at least some frame of reference. Leif claims there is a connection between a certain scene in the film and a certain occurrence in his personal history, a parallelism, a threshold value. There is also, in the film, a dream as old as humanity, realized for the screen in a gigantic cold-storage space outside Los Angeles. The dream of a place, a condition, in which good is made manifest and offers security, shelter and solace amid the existential angst of the everyday. What remains as the crucial moment in the film is of course when the small group of people crosses the threshold to Shangri-La, when the windblown life on the other side is exchanged for the calm and warmth that envelops them when they have crossed over, passed the rocky outcrop. It is, of course, the most important moment in the film, the most important moment in life. The crossing, when the transformation happens.

That one brief scene is the basis for this album of one single track of nearly 42 minutes. This is just about as minimal as a soundscape can get. The sound is submerged in bass rumble and drones, sounding either extremely distant, or like being underwater or made partially deaf. I actually had to use the (secret) download code link to verify what I was hearing was the actual album and not a defective CD. There are points in the piece where other unidentifiable sounds are present, but you may not hear them distinctly unless you turn the volume way, way up. This is a very particular type of minimal ambient with rumbling low frequency sonics that may have limited appeal, but is nonetheless intriguing.

Dardis is the ambient and experimental sound project for Northern Irish writer, editor and sound artist Colin Dardis. I had reviewed his other disc, Funerealism, and enjoyed it, so I was interested to see how this one differed. The concept behind it is interesting. The liner notes state that "I first finished the initial tracks for ACRoVC on March 15th, 2020. The following day, I started working from job as the first nationwide lockdown was introduced due to the pandemic, and the world went to Hell. The timing is odd: here I was, trying to create an album that would evoke the sense of breakdown, of things spiraling out of control, a persistent grinding of one’s mental landscape. Meantime, global circumstances were conspiring to create that experience for millions, if not billions, across the world." Sounds like an interesting ride, so let’s get into it.

We open up with "Ankle Grinder," which is a slow moving, dissonant, droning number with flute. Next up we have "Ankle Grinder (Redux)," which is a much more melodic, but darker piece. Take the original drone and pitch bend it down several levels and add some stuttering static behind it all. Nicely done. Finally, we have "A Crack in the Redux," which is more heavy drone with a healthy dose of hiss and static underlying it. The music is more intermittent than the previous tracks, however, and acts as a kind of incidental music for the soundtrack of your life (when things are not going terribly well for you).

The second disc has one track weighing in at around 22 minutes, "A Persistent Echo Heard Through the Rain." If you need a nice, dark ambient soundscape to sink into, Dardis has you covered. This is not really heavy, nor is it overly dissonant or noisy. Rather, there is a sense of uneasiness that permeates the track, while alternately drawing you in and fading into the background. This is solidly crafted and plays with the dynamics to keep it interesting. Atmosphere is the name of the game here and this track pulls it off really well.

Overall, I would put this into the realm of experimental music that leans more toward the dark ambient end of the spectrum. This is not the easy listening kind of dark ambient though. It is too jagged, too rough around the edges to simply put it on and read a good book. This demands more from the listener than that. And it is worth it. Well done. This set weighs in at around 40 minutes.

I had previously reviewed this artists' collaboration with Dragon split with Mila Drone (also on Inner Demons) and enjoyed it. Other than hailing from the UK, I don't know much about this artist, but I love the self-depreciating description of "Over 40 years of influences and zero talent." Well, I hate to disagree, but this disc shows that Jettenbach has considerable talent and it is all on display in this disc.

We open with "One Simply Cannot Sustain This Level of Gear Acquisition, But I Might Get Just One More Reverb," which is a stunningly beautiful slab of spacey drone punctuated with subdued static blasts. This would make a fantastic soundtrack to a dystopian movie. Well done. "I Have Come To Accept That I Will Never Have As Many Pedals As Dan, and That's OK" keeps this spacey feeling going, but more stripped down in feel. But this is still a solid piece of soundscape that is finely crafted and makes you wish it could go on just a bit longer.

There is a lot going on in both of these that keep it interesting and everything seems to fit together quite nicely. I also love the inside jokes that are on many of these Inner Demons discs that remind me that Dan is managing to build a community rather than a roster of artists. In short, if you are looking for lovely dark ambient, this is well worth picking up. This disc weighs in at around 20 minutes and is limited to 42 copies.

AeTopus is the electronic ambient music project of Bellingham, Washington-based Bryan Hughes and 'Cup' is his first release on the Spotted Peccary label. For over two decades, he has been crafting a personal blend of Electronica, pastoral New Age, and Dark Ambient styles. The music has evolved gently through each release, but an AeTopus signature is embedded in each song and album. 'Cup" is 13 tracks in 63 minutes and not what I would call strictly "ambient" but more along the lines of atmospheric instrumental electronica, bolstered by electro-acoustic rhythms. It took me a fair amount of plays of 'Cup' to come to any conclusion about the album, and even after that, I'm still left with a vague uneasiness about it. Perhaps it's Hughes' compositional methodology that's responsible for it.

When composing, AeTopus builds lush blankets of sound from pulsing electronic sequences and traditional percussion, then subtracts and subtracts from them. As a trained visual artist, AeTopus learned the value of negative space and applies that knowledge to these composition. This approach leaves fragments of interlocking elements with simultaneous sparseness and complexity. In theory, this should work out great, drawing the listener in to what is perceived, and leaving room for what can be imagined. In actuality, I couldn't help but think something was missing. Perhaps there was too much subtraction, or just not enough "addition". I kept searching for an underlying audible theme, but none came to me, and I listened to the whole album multiple times. If you're a regular listener to Spotted Peccary releases, you will undoubtedly find this one different than the others. The rhythmic aspects here may detract from the bubble of ambient bliss for some, but I found most of that amiably engaging. There just wasn't enough that was memorable to me to latch onto.

Oregon-based composer Jeffrey Ericson Allen’s 6th release for Spotted Peccary Music is both something somewhat familiar and something completely different; a re-imagining (in remixes) of a number of tracks from past Chronotope Project releases, as well as previously unreleased material. Ten tracks in 72 minutes gives the composer/sound producer ample time to lay out his vision for an expansive soundscape that hangs together well as a complete album rather than just independent remixes. The (remixed) opening of "Unwinding the Dream" offers gentle sequencing over water and the presence of the Haken Continuum enriches the emotional musicality of this distinctive piece. I really liked the subtlety of "Mind's I," a very nice piece to transition to from the opener. "Solar Winds" (remix) is dronish space ambient at its best, the perfect soundtrack for a flotation tank.

With "Ghost in the Machine" (previously unreleased from the 'Gnosis' sessions) you may get the feeling that the ghost has become corporeal, or at least visible. There's more melodicism here than you might imagine at first; busy lines of melody without actually sounding busy. At 10:32 "Tonglen" is the longest track on the album (but not by much) with a strong Asian influence in the woodwind department. It is also the first track that I noticed had percussion. "Arctic Spring" has an icy, isolationist quality to it, but also with the neo-classical lullaby melody of a cello and oboe. The rest of the album is nicely flowing ambient, and the final track, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" sounds like a cinematic epilogue to a major motion picture release. A splendid album that should keep Spotted Peccary busty filling Chronotope Project orders.