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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Beautiful drone-based work, 23 Sep 2005
Greg Davis's latest effort is a far cry from the bucolic ambiences of his previous records. While he spent most of his two previous albums, Arbor and Curling Pond Woods, defining superbly delicate and textured off-beat pop melodies based on acoustic instrumentation augmented with processed beats and sounds, Somnia is a much sterner piece of work. Yet, this album has far more in common with its predecessors than meets the ear and helps draw a more complete and detailed map of Davis's craftsmanship. A collector of refined field recordings and arranger of rich soundscapes par excellence, Greg Davis has been exploring more rudimentary settings for some time, developing an interest for drone-based music in the process. Somnia collects six compositions recorded within the last few years, each based around one singular source instrument, ranging from acoustic guitar or Fender Rhodes to bowed psaltery. In turn exposing sound in its roughest, most austere, form (Archer), or continuously working at it to highlight minute alterations in tone (Diaphanous, Campestral), Davis carves each element, each variation, with incredible precision. Far from presenting a static piece of work, he develops here a magnificent series of evocative compositions. The variety and scope of these tracks, especially that of the piece de resistance of this album, the epic twenty-two minute long Campestral, is truly characteristic of Davis's work and a direct result of his fascination for sound interactions. On the pastoral Diaphonous, here presented in an edited version, the full version of which was recently released on an eponymous EP (Lux Nigra), Davis works from a toy harmonica source, processing its various tonalities into superbly detailed layers to form a vibrant ensemble, while Mirages (Version 2) is based on a Schaaf punchcard music box, the sound of which, when processed, becomes strangely metallic and mechanical, bringing Somnia onto an eerie conclusion. With this album, Greg Davis clearly positions himself at the forefront of experimental music alongside his friend Keith Fullerton Whitman and provides a more complete image of his work by placing his previous two albums in a totally new context. Clearly defining wider sonic structures within which to progress, Davis impresses by his clever appropriation of electronic and acoustic spaces and his mastery at shaping them at will.
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