Ninth Desert is the current alias of Cyril Herry, who has worked in the past as Exotoendo (with a couple of excellent cds on Old Europa Café and Athanor), Lecanora and Sechres Mound (with Cédric Peyronnet/Toy Bizarre), and has been designing the layout for Taâlem and Kokeshidisk releases for some time. This 3" cdr was released by Verato Project several months ago (in a ltd. run of 60, so act fast), but I get to write about it only now; meanwhile, new works of his are available on Taâlem, Mystery Sea and AFE Records (Andrea Marutti is also mastering this one), which I'll try and review as soon as possible. Ninth Desert is both a kind of departure from his previous work (more acoustic/ritual, like Exotoendo, or rhythmic, like Lecanora), and a logical continuation of the same in terms of depth and inspiration. Herry now mostly relies on pure drones, weaving ambient textures that I wouldn't define "dark", but are surely deep and shady. His music seems to be designed to accompany meditative states, a kind of inward falling to a state of suspension. It is surely trance-inducing music, with few concessions to surface ornaments, and a solemn beauty of its own.