https://globalpattern.bandcamp.com/album/how-scissors-feel-to-the-hair
Genre: Ambient
Rating: 5/5
released on bandcamp September 21, 2021
The orange cover and interesting title caught my eye when I was digging around for something to review. If you read my reviews you might notice I seem pretty generous with the ratings. Well to be honest, if I’m not digging it, I don’t usually listen to the entire thing and then I could hardly write a review. Plus, I like to think of myself as a fan, not a critic.
Orange is my favorite color.
I’m feeling social so I’m going to share one of my orange photographs:
My grandmother wore orange everyday.
The above link is for the Flickr group Orange is a Color that is Safe and Alive. You can scroll through some orange photos there.
This record consists of four primary tracks with traditional titles. These four tracks are individually sandwiched between much shorter tracks named with the Roman numerals correlating with the track number it fills. The shorter tracks contain echoes and previews of the primary tracks. There’s mention of this in the bandcamp notes complete with listening strategies.
I like the idea of the same themes being presented in long and short form as presentation of how musical and chronological time function differently in ambient music. Unless they’re inconveniently long the length of ambient tracks is of much less importance compared to other genres. It’s a unique feature of ambient music so it makes sense to highlight it as Elatope does. All the tracks are very good and sometimes they include non-intrusive beats. The final primary track is the best track imo. It’s called
Ember and it borrows from earlier new age days with the acoustic guitar but the sonic backdrop is definitely of the last ten years. It has a comforting folksy Americana vibe. It doesn’t really sound like Eno but the use of the central theme reminds me of Eno. I know you could almost say that about any ambient release but I think it’s especially applicable here.
Warmth Highest 