There’s some excellent electronic work throughout—real deep and crunchy sounds sit comfortably against the broken-up ambient backdrops.
Scintillating soundscapes that are very atmospheric, apocalyptic and dark
Old Sympathy by Owen Vince opens with experimental poetry and spoken-word utilizing some low-end glitched electronics and rather dry sounding untreated guitar chords and occasional picks that are intended to help carry the piece over what feels like a rather lengthy 7 minutes. As the album moves on, the poetry and spoken-word continues but it’s sort of hard to make out what he’s saying, maybe it’s intended to be this way. There’s some excellent electronic work throughout—real deep and crunchy sounds sit comfortably against the broken-up ambient backdrops.
There’s also some genuinely haunting ambient music on Old Sympathy, and this is where the artist seems to excel best. Scintillating soundscapes that are very atmospheric, apocalyptic and dark. “Drown the Meadow” is the longest piece on the album and possibly the best in my opinion. The darkness contained here is a constant throughout and sometimes it works brilliantly, but at other times can be difficult to consume and it’s evident that a lot of work has been put into it. For me personally, it would have worked better as a purely instrumental piece. Still well worth a listen, though.
Old Sympathy is available on low Dance. [Bandcamp]
