A music whose motivation is to stay clear of direct attention, which exists to free consciousness for creative, restorative or contemplative activity would have succeeded if nothing at all were said about it. But for Brian Eno and others, a simultaneous goal of created ambient music (rather than the simple capture of ambient sound) is to generate waves, dynamics, tone colours or other aural stimuli that could also satisfy deliberate attention, were it switched on.
By each of these standards SCOTT SOLTER'S second album of ambient guitar/tape manipulation is a great success. SOLTER is a San Francisco studio engineer who has worked with The Mountain Goats, among others. His achievement on this album is to have created an hour's soundscape that can, should you need it, provide a musically satisfying sonic space within which thought, dreaming, meditation or prayer could find it’s own sublime level.
The long overlaid sounds, pitched and unpitched, are as close to emotional neutrality as music can get. There are no sharp edges (no percussion at all, no pools of lasciviousness, no surges of rage, regret or nostalgia. It is, simply, the flowing river of its title. Dappled with light, crossed by shadow, moving, moving, always moving. The prominent sounds (the "tune" if you like) have that reverse-tape feel of coming from nowhere and building gently to the crest of a smooth rise. So nothing intrudes, attacks or invades. The music moves gently in and disappears. Nothing stays too long to create attachments. Each track folds into the next and the whole experience is complete and uninterrupted.
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And, listening in that attentive way that wants to hear what SOLTER is actually doing, it does seem that things do not to repeat: there is no scrolling or looping of standard elements. It's all the same river, but it has it’s own continuous topography.
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