MOUNTAINS – AIR MUSEUM – Thrill Jockey

When I say this is an album of beatless electronica, you could easily be forgiven for assuming this to be another subtle work of laptop-birthed, new ambience. However, Air Museum is something significantly different: the music sounds to me to be more analogue, more organic. They also create an overwhelming, psychotropic wave of sound that refuses to discreetly sit in the background but instead envelopes and grabs the listener.

Their intuitive grasp of melody hints towards Clusters last albums.
The psychoactive properties of their vivid dronescapes point toward such hallmarks as Spacemen 3's Ecstasy Symphony and it's related drone pieces.

'Backwards Crossover' is the kind of giddy, ecstatic whirlpool of sound you would associate with someone like Neil Campbell. On the track 'Sequel' they suddenly start to sound like Vangelis and John Carpenter having a stoned synth-off.

This is all great, mind-blowing and expanding stuff but it is all just foreplay compared to the album's stunning climax 'Live at the Triple Door' which is an exploding euphoria of drones that carry away the headphone listener to another place in space and time altogether before gently taking you back with some gentle guitar.

To call yourself Mountains is a bold statement of intent but on the strength of this album they have more than what it takes to back that statement up.