Matt Borghi - Huronic Minor
Artist: Matt Borghi
Title: Huronic Minor
Label: Hypnos Secret Sounds (Ltd CDR)
2008. We here at Hypnos have long enjoyed Matt Borghi's subtle atmospheric ambient music, and believed it deserved
more attention. Many of Matt's CDs are out of print, and we've agreed to re-issue a series of our favorite
recordings on the Hypnos Secret Sounds imprint. The first of these Matt Borghi reissues will be Huronic Minor.
Simple, restrained, and artful, these recordings deserve to remain in print, and we hope these reissues will
help introduce more of today's ambient music listeners to the work of this important artist.
Track listing (with MP3 sample clips):
1. Leaving the Gates of the Open Harbor
2. November's Peculiar Calm
3. Gray Dawn Illumination
4. Point Aux Barques
5. The Longest Night
6. Red Sky Morning
7. Brooding Dark Waters
8. Distant Harbor
9. Silent Moor
"...drifting ambient music par excellence. Matt's forte is similar to that of Stephen Philips' - the ability to meld subtle synthesizer shadings and drones into mesmerizing cloud-like tone poems."
--Reviewed by Bill Binkelman, Wind and Wire (www.windandwire.com)
"The album speaks of grays and blues, reds and yellows and serenity and confusion. The juxtapositions are ambiguities as Matt teases listeners and baits them to decide where to go with the drift.
The soul becomes the guide as Matt provide only provides the vehicle. This gentle set provides essential sonic exploration and meditation!"
--Reviewed by Jim Brenholts, Author, Tracks Across the Universe
"I think Huronic Minor is brilliant, and if I may say, completely different from your previous effort For Running Time.
I don't know what to play first. I will surely chose two or three longer pieces and give them airplay."
--Reviewed by Vladimir Jovanovic, Inner Space Radio, Croatia
" Borghi has crafted a superb collection of dark drones, bruised wanderings, and ravaged ruins, glimpses of a psyche's attempts to deal with nightmarish realities.
This is rainy-day fog shrouded doom-cast netherworld music. Fans of Roach, Robert Scott Thompson, 1980s Robert Rich "sleep tunes," and all such "melting brain" music will enjoy this!
Recommended release."
--Reviewed by John W. Patterson, EER reviews
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Reviews
Reviewed by Bill Binkelman, Wind and Wire (www.windandwire.com)
"Inspired by both the Great Storm of 1913 which pummeled the Great Lakes area of the United States, along with his impressions of growing up on the shores of Lake Huron, ambient soundscape artist Matt Borghi has fashioned what is,at least to my ears, one of the premier pure ambient releases of this year. While parts of Huronic Minor could be labeled dark, the overall mood is more of mystery. There are moments of menace among the washes and drones, but there are also moments of calm and even beauty. The titles convey some of the individualized moods ("Leaving the Gates of the Open Harbor," "Gray Dawn Illumination," "Red Sky Morning," and "The Longest Night"). I suppose if you consider anything not played in a major key as dark, this would qualify. But I found parts of Huronic Minor so startlingly crystalline in beauty that I find it hard to classify the whole album as noir or dark. The album begins with "Leaving the Gates of the Open Harbor," which features slowly undulating synths and shimmering keyboards. I was instantly amazed at how Matt painted a sonic picture of how it feels to cruise slowly out of a harbor. Having ridden a fair number of ferries myself, this is music that truly "feels" like having the bow under you plowing slowly though the water. Amazing. "November's Peculiar Calm" is a much more somber cut, full of low key drones and more shimmering synths. The music on this song rises and falls in patient waves. The hint of foreboding is wonderful. The tone is not dark but is filled with a sense of something waiting out there. "Gray Dawn Illumination" brings even more of a sensation of menace to the forefront.There are high whistling synths added to the mix now, while a low rumbling bass drone elicits the presence of a fog bank rolling in, obscuring the sun, the clouds, the horizon line - everything. Think of this song as being on Richard Bone's The Spectral Ships, except it is more ambient in the extreme and less melodic (although nothing on Huronic Minor is avant garde or experimental in nature - thank goodness!). Those first three cuts are all between four and five minutes long. Theremaining three cuts ("Point Aux Barques," " The Longest Night," and "RedSky Morning") clock in from nearly nine to ten-and-a-half minutes in length."Point..." is drifting ambient music par excellence. Matt's forte is similar to that of Stephen Philips' - the ability to meld subtle synthesizer shadings and drones into mesmerizing cloud-like tone poems. "Point..." is less "shimmery" than the earlier cuts. It retains the move toward a quiet sense of menace or darkness, but there is little trace of true fear in the music. Time and time again, I heard distinct elements of slow travel over still water in this music. As if the lake was mirror still and the bow pushing through that stillness barely made a sound. No wind, no gulls, just me on the deck staring out at the damp gray world I was immersed in. The last two songs offer similar musical moods as what has come before, yet each one¹s specific tone is different. That is another strength of Matt's. I never got bored with this CD, although if a non-ambient fan would listen to it, he or she might think the sound was monotonous. But that is true ambient music¹s appeal. A startling shift of abrupt change calls attention to the music, thereby making it "non-ambient." Huronic Minor is that rarest of ambient releases, i.e. a joy to listen to in silence and be consumed by or equally effective played softly in the background as a sonic antidote for one's own confused or stressed out world so to speak. However one listens ton this highly recommended recording, the CD¹s worth and artistry are unmistakable. Added recommendation emphasis if you live near the Great Lakes or a fishing port on the Atlantic Ocean."
Reviewed by Jim Brenholts, Author, Tracks Across the Universe
"Huronic Minor is a CD that recaptures Matt Borghi's youthful experiences along the shores of Lake Huron. It is a gentle minimalist drone symphony with titled rather than numbered movements. The atmosphere is neither dark nor light, it just is! Listeners must fill in that blank themselves and go with the drift, so to speak. The album speaks of grays and blues, reds and yellows and serenity and confusion. The juxtapositions are ambiguities as Matt teases listeners and baits them to decide where to go with the drift. The soul becomes the guide as Matt provide only provides the vehicle. This gentle set provides essential sonic exploration and meditation!"
Reviewed by Vladimir Jovanovic, Inner Space Radio, Croatia
"I think Huronic Minor is brilliant, and if I may say, completely different from your previous effort For Running Time. I don't know what to play first. I will surely chose two or three longer pieces and give them airplay. My favourites so far: Leaving the gates of the open harbor Point aux barques Brooding dark waters and particularly The longest day; the simplest, but very effective piece."
Reviewed by John W. Patterson, EER reviews
"In 1913, horrific storms decimated the poor ships and shoreline folks of the Great Lakes area in North America. "Many lives were lost" could have been that era's news headlines. Mother Nature went on a relentless rampage. The tragedy and its tales left an impression on Borghi, growing up near that same area, watching those same waters and winds decades later. As if echoes of the "day after" with one's witnessing the devastation and void left in one's soul following natural disasters - Borghi has crafted a superb collection of dark drones, bruised wanderings, and ravaged ruins, glimpses of a psyche's attempts to deal with nightmarish realities. So is this dark-lit ambience good? Yes, it is. Borghi has created a very well thought out work and performed it with pro execution. You gain a sense of emptiness and loss, "see" a wasteland of helplessness beyond horizons of shock. This is a soundtrack for the traumatized, the deep-sixed or should I say the deep-fathomed ones. This is rainy-day fog shrouded doom-cast netherworld music. Fans of Roach, Robert Scott Thompson, 1980s Robert Rich "sleep tunes," and all such "melting brain" music will enjoy this!
Recommended release."
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