LPF12 - Whiteout

Ok, four songs. I can handle this. An EP! Easy enough! Until i noticed the length of the first song. 38 minutes and 27 second. eeehmmmmm....help? The last one even clocks in at 1 hour, 6 minutes and 15 seconds! Oh noes! One thing is sure, this one isn't for the people who like it short, catchy and snappy! Four songs, and the total length is more than two and a half hours! The torture never stops!

The music on this disc is ambient and its inspired by cold places like Antarctica. This is extremely easy music to make. As long as you have a good feeling for timbre, you can mix out those washed out long droning pads and sweeps and the results are mostly pleasing and very abstract. And this is most certainly the case on this album. Beautiful pads from synthesizers whirl around, and sometimes dark drones emerge from the depths to haunt the listener, and strange sounds echo through the ever meandering and changing sonic landscape.

What does it sound like? Old Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, Aphex Twin on "Selected ambient works II", Speedy J's ambient side project under his own name Jochem Paap, but with much, much longer songs. Maybe this is great stuff for people into meditation and who like to hover around in those dark salt water tanks to experience alternate realities. I don't know.

But lets not be to negative. What LPF12 is doing here is pleasing for the ears. This album is very nice to listen to, and the ever changing soundscapes keep you posted. If you have the time to listen to 2.5 hours of ambient with a dark touch, 'White out' certainly isn't going to disappoint you. Jun 10 2012