The music itself is never fully drifting ambience, there is an ever present rhythmic sense either in a shuffling background rhythm, a deep bassline undercurrent, or repeating textures of noise, driving each track along.
Haunted, eerie, and mysterious
What I least expected—an ambient album! However, once again, this is not exactly as it seems at the outset. The atmospheres on Scanner’s An Ascent are not the blissful drifting breeze you might be expecting from ambience—no, these tracks paint a mysteriously modular, and very dark place indeed. Never outright menacing, but clearly dystopian, a world you recognize but seen through alien eyes. The music itself is never fully drifting ambience, there is an ever present rhythmic sense either in a shuffling background rhythm, a deep bassline undercurrent, or repeating textures of noise, driving each track along. Voices drift in and out lending a subtle narrative to the entire work. I don’t know how to describe the melodies themselves other than the cliched haunting, eerie, and, well, mysterious. A very subtle, coherent, and beautiful work from a seasoned master.
An Ascent is available on DiN July 17, 2020. [Bandcamp]
