“Sector Four is yet another fine opus of dark ambient music from Phobos”
1 Sector Four 69:39
(DDL 69:39) (V.F.)
(Dark ambient, Drone, Experimental EM)
A warm breeze out of nowhere lifts the subtle particles of the windy harmonies from SECTOR FOUR. These euphonies exchange the refulgence of the first breaths to be transformed into more somber, hollower winds. Winds which will always be at the heart of this atonal symphony and of these secret singings which little by little are coppering themselves of more astral, more cosmic atmospheres. Letting ourselves being absorbed by the hot cosmic winds of Sector Four, and of their sibylline complexions, it is to agree to let travel our aura in the abstruse territories of the dark ambient music of Phobos. David Thompson is structuring a long ambient dawn serenade where only the fine subtleties bud the slow implosions which redirect in delicacy the flows of winds, the immobility of the movements. Except that there is nothing really new in the darkness of Phobos. Much less dark than Darker, we can really have darker, but just as much atonal, SECTOR FOUR is a long ambient journey where the listener has constantly this sensation to float with celestial bodies throughout the 70 minutes that lasts this concerto for winds mislaid in the cosmic corridors. It's quiet. Very quiet! The delicate morphic changes chase away a possible boredom with momentums full of restraint which propel every segment of the album towards new horizons of night-contemplativity. Flowing like an invisible water into the profound bed of a cosmographical river, the 70 minutes of Sector Four switch around quite slowly the sensibility of the intersidereal breaths which trade its translucent suntans for more neurasthenic tints. Composed and played with a minimum of equipment (VST and plug-ins), Phobos digs the grooves of his sonic breaths like an architect polishes lovingly his mouldings in order to harmonize them with the singings of winds. An opus exclusively ambient whose atone form exchanges imperceptibly according to the slow peaceful oscillations, SECTOR FOUR makes us adrift in a nothingness skillfully put in sounds by David Thompson who always finds a way to charm the listening with fine modulations in his times.
Sylvain Lupari (October 13th, 2014) ***½**
Available at Phobos Bandcamp