One can't do without some historical data on THE DISINTEGRATION LOOPS II. Two acts of destruction are merged in one creative idea. Two "minuses" have turned into "pluses" with mathematical precision: the falling of NY twins and the once and for all flaking magnetic tape that has been storing William's records for ages. There are no transformations in sight within the cyclical movement of loops. No contrasts, just one big, amorphous cloud, kaleidoscopically lighted from without. Its compositions, once smooth and flexible, have not been reborn, but rather taken another stance, thanks to a magnetic tape. The dynamic reincarnation has hidden the past beyond the silent memory, leaving to us only what's on show here. The curious thing in this album's idea is the intersection of attitudes - the parting with the past in order to create in the present and the saving of the present in order not to forget in the future.

The opportunity to see William's video-installation, which emphasizes the roots of this work, will bring immeasurable rewards. Let us just say that the video is nothing else than the fixing of day-long fading of American emblem - the skyscrapers of World Trade Center. Rolling clouds of smoke and dust, sucked in by the clear sky in an attempt to hide its inappropriate smoothness, the shifts of lighting and the dark silhouettes of city domes and roofs, watching the agonized convulsions of their gaudy neighbors from a distance.

A clarinetist with a classical background, expressive jazz saxophonist and stylish composer William Basinski doesn't live any space for boredom and indifference. His trademark technique - mixing and overdubbing several melodic loops - sounds quite simple, but from this simplicity his delicate and abrasive ambient aquarelles are born.

The first of a couple of long compositions is "D|P 2.2". The crunching and whooshing surround snatches of sound that stir the calm smoothness of light and blurry melodic line. The crackling and droning sounds seem like they're trapped in the cabin of a roller coaster. The slow ascending to the next peak and the shivers of impatience are running through the body as the heart ceases to beat and in the middle of a sigh we are thrown down again to the abyss which is instantaneous, strangely attractive and inescapable. The next round, deceptively similar to the previous one, will find us in completely another, excited state. On the next peak the throw down will not be so sharply felt, we will feel the desire to retain the regular breath in order to be able to see everything that's visible from the point of the beginning of falling. The irrepressible oblivion will turn into the heat of a hunter.

The music of William is not a landscape, it's the air filled with ozone, made sparser by the wind and colored by sun blisters. The stamp of beauty is found on every bit of it, the beauty as the only constant force which is visible even during the saddest moments. The gentle melancholy, which is especially felt in the second composition on the disc "D|P 3", does not break the inner harmony. It is changing the balance of moods, but doesn't bring any mess of feelings. The sound flows freely in our veins, it seems, instead of being limited by space enclosed within the walls. The crystal flow of sound penetrates each living cell, enveloping the insides, filling us with unexplainable freshness, relaxing, giving strength, unobtrusively healing and remaining after it's gone. Hypnotized, we leave the headphones lying on the table after completing this journey together with the music, taking this calm, ever-staying beauty with us. The pulsating atmosphere becomes part of us. It's out of reach for unconsciousness because it's not a phenomenon, but a natural, universal rhythm.

The Canadian composer Bruce Atchison appears not as the creator, but rather as the delicate conductor of the three worlds - the world common to all mankind, the private inner world, and the no man's cosmic one. With an unexplainable, both alienating and magnetic spiral he screws the mind of a listener into the solid rock of infinity! He showers us with waves, not impulses that are ready to rise from just one half-sigh. The turning of head, the swallowing of saliva, the random playing of wind behind the windowpane, is about to tear the tight thread, meticulously tuned by Bruce's genius, about to break the unstable link between the planes of space, time, sensuous and visual memory. By moving the planes and facets, he builds the multilevel pyramid, matching the clearances with some linking diagonal that sets the trajectory for our purposeful journey.

Let's stretch the mental canvas to its full length, wipe off the dust, deleting all unnecessary details, smoothing out all wrinkles and washing out the spots. Remaining motionless, we find ourselves in the final point which is not identical to the beginning. Our medium does not deceive us with some serene hypnosis, but there's no other natural ways of listening to his music, which is not even so much of music, as it is the interdimensional speech, amplified in the light of microscopic magnification.

The dark, ominous and spiky sonic fragments make up the alluring and harmonic whole and the technicism of womb-like, edgy voice becomes the hook that firmly holds the uneasy, flowing beauty of electronic melodies within the limits of the river-bed. The painting of sound by Bruce Atchison is akin to the geometrical plastic of the art of Ancient Egypt, and its origin seems equally dubious at times - either human hands or extraterrestrial forces. The mystery of the sphinx, the pyramids, and the music of Atchison - even if the scale is different, the origins seem to be the same. The author's use of radio-wave aesthetics doesn't mean his longing for unnecessary complexity and excessive décor; it's the essential part of his universal thinking that covers all elements, distances and moods.

Some compositions are essentially just words submerged in ambient textures. The music has narrative character as well. It's neither the monolog of a bard nor lively hip-hop recital, nor fluffy opera lyricism. It's more like the distant observation, the statement of the endless wayfaring of a man in the most global and existential sense.

The compositions, full of diversity and expression, are hanging on the rope of single tempo. The insinuating sonic fog is ascending in serpentine movements like a snake. The proceedings are laid-back and calming and we find melancholy without sentimentality, modesty of colors without monotony. The landscapes are light and airy. They are almost imperceptible, so that only the well-cut structure reminds us of their presence, without which the sound would turn into formless and inert mass.

The seemingly faceless and cold music hides real strong charge that makes sure the generous message of the composer safely reaches the listener. This message is to embrace the whole world and to newly find your own self as part of it, and to do it in a way yet unthinkable.

It's enough to cast a look at the cover of the CD by Steven Feld RAINFOREST SOUNDWALKS to be immediately immersed in a special world. The opposite of commonness is not some kind of mystic dream. It is something very simple and probably accessible - land, forests, in other words, just the nature itself and the CD tells a story exactly about nature. It doesn't tell its story using human language, instead making use of that of birds, transmitting the hypnotic "Ambiences of Bosavi, Papua New Guinea" (the subtitle of the CD). This is a far cry from the fussy chirping of city birds. Beginning in 1976, Steven Feld traveled a lot to the exotic place in order to bring the alluring "acoustic depths of Bosavi" to us, listeners, on a convenient one-hour compact disc.

The imagination and mastery of an artist together with sensitiveness and knowledge of a naturalist resulted in RAINFOREST SOUNDWALKS. The four compositions, three of them being united in one series called "The Ambient Soundwalks", make up the sizable picture of this exotic corner of the world, where people still believe in migration of souls and hear the voices of ancestors in the birds singing. Seyak - the local species of butcherbird not only became the title, but also the main and only ingredient of the first composition. Here we can hear its voice in all its beauty, unassisted by other artificial or natural sound sources. In the triptych "The Ambient Soundwalks" the sound is captured in the state of movement both in space and time. "Keafo, morning", "Galo, afternoon", "Nulu, nigh" is the unique mirror of the sound dimension of Oceania, a split twenty-four hours seen through the prism of singing dwellers of Bosavi.

Steven Feld himself appears in several stances. As a scientist he has thoroughly studied the ornithological fauna of Bosavi. As an engineer he has brilliantly recorded, mixed and mastered the breathtaking ?vocal parts? of cicadas, frogs, pigeons, cacadou and other birds. As a composer he has integrated these to a light and colorful musical pastiche. As a photographer he has taken wonderful pictures of Papua New Guinea's landscapes. As a writer he has provided his work with the explanation of his motivations, letting us take a look at the source and meaning of his works.

Cheer up, if you have to stay at home or work, unable to take a trip overseas. RAINFOREST SOUNDWALKS quenches the thirst for changes, gives food to imagination and lets you touch that "feeling of a place" that is mentioned in the introductory text of the CD. Every one of us may feel his affinity to the world of this faraway island, because all income from this record goes to Bosavi People's Fund and The Music Department of the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies.

The double disc published by Earth Ear Records is in fact two separate products - the sampler of ecological music and the collection of various texts. Attempts to understand the mysteries of nature as well as to get to the underworld of the Earth and civilization form the basis for each one of them, but also trying to show the links between all living things via acoustic media. I recommend to patiently read everything that's written in the booklet if you are willing to listen to this sampler. The hypnotic, unobtrusive and tangible poetry of John Luther Adams helps you to tune in emotionally to the music. The introductory text by Jim Cummings accentuates the necessary elements and provides the obligatory context, which helps to understand the meaning behind the music. The quotations from different authors featured on the sampler reveal their common ideology, which lies in understanding the world in all its wholeness, dynamics and complex interconnections via the sonic experience. The briefly explained View of Gaia is the result of merging various conceptions about the essence and meaning of the creative work of "the sound sculptors". It's an important part that leads to understanding THE DREAMS OF GAIA in all its wholeness. There's no point in telling you about all virtues of this wonderful booklet, I can only stress that this information will not burden you, will not complicate the process of listening. Quite the opposite - it will enrich your perception directing it along the path of the highest delight.

To be able to move in space without leaving your seat is one of the most important advantages that the art is able to give you. This is also true about music. Especially that kind of music which IS space itself - space in its sonic form. THE DREAMS OF GAIA takes you on journeys whose trajectories cross many different corners of the world - North and South America, Africa, Europe, Siberia, Australia and Antarctica. Megalopolises and national parks, deserts and glaciers, moorlands and meadows - all are kind tributaries of this single sonic river.

The main intrigue in DREAMS OF GAIA is that the objects are not visible, their presence only indicated by sounds and we are free to build our own associations, to imagine landscapes, time and... ourselves. By surrendering to our own imagination we will be able to change the state we're in. The hints provided by the devotees of "natural audio" will find their own continuation within us, revealing our own human connection with everything that exists both materially and sensually.

The flow of a river, the splashing of waterfalls, the whooshing of wild duck's wings, the screaming of hunchback whales and the rumbling of gorillas, the chirring of water insects, the whispering of a forest, the crackle and rustling of its dwellers, the neighing of horses, the wailing of sirens, the noise of highways, human speech and laugh and the slightly perceivable breath of wind - everything seems to be fixed, the fragments are taken out of reality and built into full compositions. So, where does the feeling of something mythically mysterious that permeates each composition comes from when we know that all source material is quite mundane? The blind man, suddenly recovering his sight on a gloomy evening somewhere on the darkish edge of town will probably find everything that surrounds him to be extremely colorful. For a dull ear the simplicity of everyday sounds seems like a supernatural revelation. And we can only repeat the words of Jim Cummings "Thanks to the sound". But even greater gratitude must go to those who scrupulously discovers and collects the sounds, "opens" our ears and conducts us to the wealthy universe which is often left unnoticed by us. There are works of 19 different authors on this disc, including such masters of natural sound as Bernie Krause, Gordon Hempton and Walter Tilgner along with other non-ordinary artists of sonic space.

There's something utterly symbolic in the fact that I got this CD in the beginning of March when the war in Iraq was about to begin and people's feelings all over the world were boiling hard while all thoughts revolved around that approaching catastrophe which was just one of the many events in the history of mankind.

David Rothenberg and Douglas Quin offer their own vision of the lost Eden on BEFORE THE WAR. It's not fruitless "yearning for innocence", though. It's an attempt to find that "painful point" where the natural flow of things is interrupted and the world is submerged in the depth of chaos. The war is the main drama but possibly the most intricate and painful experience is the prelude to war. Agonizing wait, oppressive numbness, confusion, inscrutability of the reality, tension in soul, and, as a protective reaction - carelessness and longing for one-minute delights, blindly following the life-loving nature of man - it's all there, within ten stylish, laid-back jazz compositions. The artificial beauty adds to the natural one and gives relief to this soft and melodic sound painting. The open topics - our world, people and the nature - everything transforms and becomes intimate by means of the personal and expressively restrained playing.

As was stated by the creators of the album, the leitmotif of BEFORE THE WAR is the nostalgia. This leitmotif doesn't allow confusion to creep in and helps to retain the clear perception of the geographic kaleidoscope found on this CD. Zimbabwe, Algeria, Karelia, Sweden and Lebanon - all are perceivable in that way or other. These were the places where the musicians - David Rothenberg and Douglas Quin - took their inspiration from, either indirectly - by using native acoustic timbres and musical stylistics, or directly - by reciting (narrated by David Rothenberg) the facts about tragic moments in the life of various corners of the world. Wonderful instrumental passages of David Rothenberg (clarinet, keyboards), Bill Douglas (bass, flutes) and Russ Gold (percussion) surround the hypnotic samples of wild life and human voices from Alaska, Madagascar, Costa-Rica, Kenya and Brazil, all collected by Douglas Quin. The fifth composition called "Karelian Night" deserves special attention. Here we can hear the only appearance of Mari Jarvinen. Jouhikko (Finnish bow instrument with three strings) was brought to life in her hands. We can also hear her crystal voice which can only be called disarming, that gave the composition completeness and deep lyricism.

Earth Ear Records that has released this album as always doesn't leave the listener embarrassed. The disc comes with an extensive booklet, from which you can learn the real situation that provoked the appearance of this album, as well as the methods and principles, upon which musicians built their improvisations, the conceptual basis of their creative work.