(03.18.07) Here’s an album that doesn’t give you much to go on. No track titles, a booklet of blank white pages, and little else. It even starts nondescript, with a reverbed keyboard loop and environmental sounds that slowly, ever so slowly, find each other. Track 2 brings in strings, flute, and some operatic vocals. Track 3 invites an irritating, directionless clicking noise to the mix, along with some far-off wailing. What begins as strangely relaxing becomes quite annoying. And that is the really frustrating thing about White –for every really pleasing ingredient, there’s something totally annoying going on at the same time –and it is impossible to ignore anything annoying. So White ends up being kind of a mixed bag, an evolving ambient soundscape that pleases while it detracts. After the triumphant, majestic climax that is track 6, the track 7 denouement has that misplaced flute again, and then 30 minutes of unpleasant silence.
White is out now on Auris Media.
