Previous solo albums of Nooten have featured a distracting range of female voices and a tendency towards new age nonsense.
On this more focused double album, the Dutchman opts for an all-instrumental approach described as offering "different shades of melancholia".
Composed and mixed entirely on a Mac Book Pro, its strengths lie in the minimalist structures and the purity of the melodies.
It’s a lttle on the synthetic side, but the use of piano and string patches add some human warmth to proceedings.
Track titles from CD1, like Here Is Light, Slowed, Unbroken and The Long Goodbye reappear on the second disc, giving the work a circular dimension.
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Since the drifting textures remains fairly static, with a studied absence of hooks, listeners have be prepared to go with the flow rather than skip to the beat.
If embraced in this spirit, it offers a serene soundtrack to your life.
Pieter Nooten's website
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