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Reviews

Dac Crowell — Harmundum
(Suilven 003, 2003, CDr)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2004-04-01

Harmundum Cover art

What’s a Harmundum? Well, if what’s on this disc defines it, it’s one long beautiful sparkling shimmering chord stretched out to a almost an hour, full of subtle nuances, undercurrents, harmonics, and internal melodic components, constantly evolving, changing in different directions, adding new components while masking others, going deeper and deeper. It’s sort of like when you look at a leaf with the naked eye – you see this green thing that looks quite simple; then you look at it with a magnifying glass and you see many details and subtleties that weren’t visible with the naked eye. Finally you look at it with a microscope and you’re looking at a whole new world of myriad details that weren’t even visible with the magnifying glass. Yet it’s still a leaf! And so it is with Harmundum. It’s just one chord – all the way through, stretched out and examined in submicroscopic detail. It’s beautiful, haunting, and infinitely interesting. What’s more is that the listener is given an opportunity to travel through the various components that make it up. One might liken it to the relationship of listening to an orchestra at a distance – where one hears the complete sound of all the instruments at once, to walking through the orchestra, hearing the contribution of each and every instrument as you pass near it, growing louder as you approach it, and fading as you move beyond it. The overall effect is completely engaging and addictive; Harmundum is easily among the best ambient releases of 2003.

Filed under: New releases, Issue 29, 2003 releases

Related artist(s): Dac Crowell

 

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