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Rudy Adrian — Reflections on a Moonlit Lake
(Spotted Peccary SPM2606, 2024, CD / DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2024-04-09

Reflections on a Moonlit Lake Cover art

This is Rudy Adrian’s 20th album since the turn of the century, and his ninth on Spotted Peccary (and Lotuspike before that); during that time his electronic music has covered a lot of territory, from heavily sequenced fare to gentle floating ambient sounds and just about all points in between. With his latest endeavor, Reflections in a Mountain Lake, one might describe the eleven short-form pieces as calming, atmospheric, and colorful, with a dreamlike beauty and far-reaching warmth that follows the listener from one piece to the next even though each of these instrumental pieces is discrete. Much like the album cover, the sounds herein evoke a sense of natural beauty that is at once mystifying, exotic, and otherworldly, calling on all manner of synthesizer, software tools, fragmented notes on piano, washes of flute, occasional percussive elements, and deep cavernous echoes, all treated to the finest studio processing to create a formidable and immersive soundworld for a listener to get completely lost within. The undercurrents within the sound are floating and textural, leaving plenty of room for the listener’s imagination while the shimmering scintillations that sometime occupy the surface give room to the moods and emotions that carry each piece forward. Samples of natural sounds are sometimes used, though very judiciously — and effectively. Track titles like “Within the Darkness,” “Lunar Shadow,” “Dawn across the Southern Ocean,” and the title track suit the pieces well, and the closer “Summer Night Rain” is an effective curtain call for the ten gentle pieces that precede it. Fans of floating ambient sounds should find plenty herein as suitable accompaniment for rest, meditation, and slumber.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Rudy Adrian

More info
http://rudy-adrian.bandcamp.com/album/reflections-on-a-moonlit-lake

 

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