V/A: Before We Melt: Vital Weekly Review

BEFORE WE MELT (Compilation CD by IVDT)
Sitting here in the Northern Hemispheres' warm days of spring it is quite a pleasure watching the snowfilled landscape presented on the artwork of present album from the Oakland-based label IVDT. Since the opening three pieces on this 45-minutes running compilation titled "Before we melt" have a quite dark and melancholic nature, I had the idea that the titled refers to the global warming crisis but the theme on this compilation is simply the cold winter. Most tracks on the album has a title referring to the winter-time and the musical quality of the compilation is quite high. Opening with Bitcrush a.k.a. Mike Cadoo (former member of IDM-project Gridlock), the track titled "Glacial" is a beautiful and quite dark drone-based ambient-work followed by another melancholic drone-based work by the composer Electricwest. Downbeat rhythm-textures gently follows the distant drones on this IDM-based work by Electricwest. Third track is my favorite piece of the compilation: "Kontulalibrarytrack" is a grandiose downbeat piece of sheer beauty created by Lackluster running approx. 6 minutes and with the same longing melancholy of the opening two pieces. From this track forward the atmosphere changes into a slightly more light and lush with a number of IDM until the second final track by Headphone Science that moves back to the melancholy of the opening three tracks. A pleasant album that for the main part circulates in the downbeat/ambient spheres of IDM. And the best thing: The album can be downloaded for free from the the website mentioned below. I highly recommend you to do so... (Niels Mark)
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