“This album is a long ambient quest where ['ramp] and Markus Reuter polish their styles within their own perceptions and variations of tones”
1 Ceasing To Exist 7:45 2 Seelenmord 8:00 3 Jeanne D’Arc 4:30 4 Yet another Ambient Track 12:10 5 Number Nine 9:45 6 My Guitar Gently Weeps 15:48 7 Holier 5:16 doombient.music | ramp005
(CD/DDL 63:16) (V.F.)
(Dark Ambient music)
CEASING TO EXIST! What a significant and doubtful title. It's also a strange title for a 7th opus. A lighter album that reflects a little more the musical personality of Markus Reuter than the Makowski & Parsick duo. Written since a long time, CEASING TO EXIST has known the ['ramp] curse, before finally being released. Totally ambient, the new trio wondered about the relevance to put this album on the market until Markus Reuter finishes the final mix.
The eponymous title begins on a heavy and slow atmospheric phase with intense vibrations that create a wave of impulses, so the roarings adorn its main axis. A heavy and floating title with fine modulations that create shaking and severe hum. The intensity goes up a notch with Seelenmord. If the beginning is imbued with a heavy clamor, the tone clears on a long linear buzz with dark and tight fluctuations. The first synth pads add a more ethereal sound dimension that Jeanne D'Arc confirms with the emergence of a choir with uncertain airs. A beautiful tender moment that hangs in a dark timeless hallway to finally pour itself into the intense fluctuations of Yet Another Ambient Track. This ambient title mixes the flavors of Klaus Schulze with Steve Roach's slowness in nice harmonious modulations. The power of this passage is unavoidable even with this environment of ambient elements which dominates and where long buzzes crisscross short harmonious layers and controlled stridencies. An ambient title whose intensity decreases gradually and keeps its sluggish movement that drifts to the first breaths of Number Nine, a short title that plays on its modulations from light to dark. My Guitar Gently Weeps is not a wink to George Harrison. It's a long ambient labyrinth with passages of a harmonious limpidity that light out the lanterns of a very astral period. Holier ends this opus in a climate of relaxation and brings the last breaths of ['ramp] towards an abyssal darkness.
CEASING TO EXIST is a long ambient quest where ['ramp] and Markus Reuter are working their styles on their customary variations. This mix of threatening buzzes and harmonious limpidity creates a most unusual sound feast where I discovered an amazing artist in Markus Reuter.
Sylvain Lupari (21/03/07) *****
Available at [´ramp] Bandcamp