144 Pulsations of Light

Tim Gray is trained in meditation and hypnotic states, and his ambient compositions are composed on all kinds of New Age principles to enable brainwaves to align, encourage contemplation and whatnot. If you read the album blurb about all this, you’d think you’d know exactly what you were going to get. But on this record there’s so much more than the average relaxation drone and tinkle. The combined field recordings, moiré interference patterns formed by waves of abstract sound, fuzz and distortion often feel closer to the experiments of My Bloody Valentine or Fennesz than to hippie music. There’s a darkness here, through which the “pulsations of light” glimmer, and even a sense of threat from the immense muffled 808 kickdrums that boom in the depths. You can meditate to this for sure, but it’s a meditation that’ll take you to strange places and leave deep, lingering memories.