Edward Rizo :: Soundscapes Volume One (Self Released)

The album itself feels like a trip through a dark, concrete maze. Occasionally, you’ll see little slivers of light, glimpses of the sky or the world outside, but most of the time you’re blindly following smooth walls of drone with your hands, changing directions when you encounter a wall every half-minute or so.

With the influx of minimal ambient material being released, it’s hard to tell if the producer is a master at work or just a hack, but that’s half the fun of listening.  Every note could be the result of a deliberate, calculated process, overseen by a control freak, confident and absolutely sure of what they are doing.  Alternately, the man behind the music could be a nervous first-time producer, screwing around with synthesizers, guitars, or whatever and uploading the results.  A producer anywhere between these two extremes could conceivably make a beautiful drone album, too, and it would be just as hard to tell the difference. The point: it doesn’t matter.

Soundscapes Volume One is the first I had heard of Edward Rizo, and after Googling his name and being directed toward the Facebook profile of a Six Flags employee whose interests include “kicking rocks” and “being cool,” I’m guessing you haven’t either. Knowing nothing about the artists history as a producer kept me attentive and receptive to Soundscapes Volume One, as I was listening to see whether Rizo really was a master producer making a fully-formed debut or just a forgettable imitator.

Judging by the song titles, the cover art, and the overall layout of its BandCamp page, one can infer that Soundscapes Volume One is a pretty desolate affair.  The album itself feels like a trip through a dark, concrete maze.  Occasionally, you’ll see little slivers of light, glimpses of the sky or the world outside, but most of the time you’re blindly following smooth walls of drone with your hands, changing directions when you encounter a wall every half-minute or so.  The choices of song names seem to suggest this maze is underwater – “Bathyscaphe” (audio stream below) might be the titular vessel’s last moments before it runs out of power, and others like “Maw,” “Baleen,” and “Hypothermia” evoke cold, slow dread.  Others, like album closer “Consummate,” evolve carefully, each tone dying and shedding its skin to reveal a new one, the same but different.

After all this, it’s still hard to tell if Rizo just stumbled onto these compositions or if each one was a painstaking labor (though I’d be willing to bet on the latter) but again, it doesn’t matter.  While these compositions could easily be compared to any of those offered by countless other producers, inherent similarities between Soundscapes Volume One and others like it are unavoidable in the genre of drone and do not diminish the effect nor the replay value of the album itself.  This is an engaging album and a rewarding listen for those who can navigate its depths.

Soundscapes Volume One is out now and available as a free MP3 via Edward Rizo’s BandCamp page.