SOL (G2)

Sol (G2) is Phrozenlight continuing on the trail of boredom that he's been floating on over the past few releases (all released in January-February 2006), but this album is actually slightly better. Among the ambient drones of hovering darkness are synthesized choir-sounds and the sounds of the sun's warm rays that were present in Phrozenlight's better recordings. Still, though, this album is mostly uneventful droning ambience with minimal effects, with strong emphasis on minimal. This is album is also slightly better in that the context of the music on each track vs. the tracks title is more fitting and convincing. "Helios" actually does kind of have a warm, sunny, large, and ominous kind of feel with the sounds of solar winds flaring outward. "Solarised" is a little more dissonant in sound, but is also a little less convincing than "Helios". As with other releases by Phrozenlight, these tracks are long (each is roughly half of the entire album) but don't progress at all. I do understand that stark minimalism is the game to play for ambient musicians, but not for someone who lists Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream in their influences.

I'm still hoping that some of the future releases from Phrozenlight offer some better variation in sound. I was previously impressed by some of the earlier work in Phrozenlight's catalog, but lately I've been left a bit dry.

With Phorzenlight there's always the risk of getting about one hour of low volume noises which don't go anywhere, and this is what I was afraid of after the previous two albums.

I have to say that even if very few things happen also on the two long tracks of this album, the sounds are not so boring and flat as in "Moon". There's the impression of a chord, some electronic "ooh" and effectively, if you are travelling alone on a starship through the deep space, this is an appropriate soundtrack.

"Helios" is everything but boring, but you have to be in the right mood. This is up to now the track closer to the Tangerine Dream of the Pink Period that this Flying Dutchman has been able to produce even being for his own admission strongly influenced by them. I survived to those rhythmless 26 minutes of keyboards and this is likely to happen again.

"Solarised" is a bit longer, clocking at 31:21. Now the basic chord is minor and the ooh voices include low pitches. For the rest it's honestly almost identical to the other track and it's strange having so few to say about a track of this length apart some "strings" appearing and disappearing suddenly in the background. In particular situations I can enjoy this music. If you are in meditation it can work fine, that's why my rating would be "barely good and absolutely non essential", but it doesn't mean an integer number of stars so I'm rounding it up to three.