COLD NIGHT

Cold Night is a little bit of a regression for Phrozenlight, but I still found this only slightly less enjoyable than Dragons of Pern. Like some previous recordings, this album consists mostly of tracks that don't go anywhere or add anything interesting to the usual dark ambience of space. "Dawn of a New Year", "Cold Night" and "Dark Noon" take the listener out into space and lets them sit there - solar winds occasionally pass by, but so what? Stark, minimal, boring, and passable.

Fortunately, "Dark Water" is fully enthralling. Among the normal, dark, dreary atmosphere that this album has had so far, this track offers of extraterrestrial communication and the sounds of distant satellites calling to earth and radiating the planets' magnetic wave sounds off of their own metallic bodies. The experimental sounds glisten like glass over the soft buzzscape, booming but steady bass, and the chorus-like ambient drones, all of which slowly progress throughout for purpose of keeping interest. "Cold Smoke" is more similar to the first few tracks than the wonderful "Dark Water", but this track offers up a furiously windy atmosphere with fading and growing darkness that engulfs and releases the listener, keeping the chorus-like ambient drones and a few experimental resonances from far beyond.

Cold Night, as a whole, isn't as good as Dragons of Pern, but the two tracks on this album that are great definitely are winners. Considering that all of these albums are free, I'm quite excited to see what's in store next for my craving ears and mind. If you're looking for an ominous rendering of Eno's Music for Airports, then you should check this album out, because it's basically music for abandoned space shuttles.

The "ooh" sound which pervades the "Dawn of a New Year" is so spacey and reminding of Clarke's Odyssey that I think it's a dawn seen from the orbit as it gives me the impression of planets moving in slow motion. It's a pity that this artist is capable of creating a so interesting background and avoids putting anything in foreground. This is the main difference between most of his works and those of early Tangerine Dream. The second are good in creating those atmospheric soundscapes but adding also a bit of music sometimes. So even if I like being crawled by this kind of thing maybe laying down on a lawn watching the sky on a summer night, I see no reason for a track like this to last 4, 8, 16 or 32 minutes. Like a fractal, you can take any part of it and expand or contract it as much as you want. It won't change.

"Cold Night" starts better. Still no music, in the common sense, but the noises of remote thunders, rain and winds are a good intro. Unfortunately it doesn't develop enough and remains at that level for 16 minutes. I like it, I enjoy it, but it's just me. I can't suggest this thing to anybody who's looking for music. As well as you may enjoy watching a storm from the warmth of your home, behind your window while drinking hot tea, you may enjoy also this sequence of sounds.

"Dark Noon" has some keyboards. We can hear proper chords, a background and a foreground, even if far from being a melody of any kind. Dark ambient, more than spacey. At least here something happens.

"Dark Water" features some bells the thing closer to a percussion that you can find on this album (and on Phrozenlight's albums in general). An exciting track compared with the rest.

"Cold Smoke" is the less cold track of the album, even though the clean keyboard playing the usual note can be a little "icy". There's more in this part than on most of his whole huge discography. At least this track seems to go somewhere...but never arrives anywhere as usual.

So not really a bad album, but a bit more of inventive like in the last track would have made it really better. I think there are better examples of space rock or progressive electronic around so my 3 stars are rounded very up. Surely non-essential but if you are in search of this kind of music this is as good as another else. Of course between spinning this and Zeit I prefer the second by light-years.