Sense Project - The Sublime (2cdr)
Artist: Sense Project
Title: The Sublime
Label: Hypnos Secret Sounds, ltd 2cdr edition of 300
2008. This release is a departure for the Hypnos Secret Sounds imprint in that it will be a two disc set.
Sense Project is an alter-ego of Robert Logan, who releases experimental electronic music under his
true name, including the truly amazing debut CD Cognessence.
Robert also composed the music for Alex Gibney's Oscar-winning documentary feature
'Taxi to the Darkside' along with Ivor Guest and Philip Sheppard.
The Sublime careens from drone ambient, to churning, confrontational Aphex Twin style rhythms, with perhaps more rich and diverse
sound content than any album we've ever released. Normally we'd have reservations about releasing a double CD by a young,
emerging artist but this one justifies its duration without question. If you're not sure about buying an ambient 2CDR release
by a teen-aged recording artist (actually, he may be 20 by now... we should check before we go around repeating the "he's only 19" thing),
just give the MP3 sample clips a try.
Track listing, with MP3 clips:
CD. 1 "The Sublime Part I"
1.) Vidék MP3 clip
2.) Rain Chimes (featuring Andrea Black on vocals) MP3 clip
3.) A Moment MP3 clip
4.) Solar Insect MP3 clip
5.) The Sublime MP3 clip
6.) Garden (featuring Sarah Sarhandi on viola) MP3 clip
7.) Isten MP3 clip
8.) Éjjel MP3 clip
9.) Death and After (featuring Francis Logan on violin) MP3 clip
CD. 2 "The Sublime Part II"
1.) Erdõ MP3 clip
2.) Mantis Religiosa MP3 clip
3.) Prime Mover MP3 clip
4.) Shards MP3 clip
5.) The Lamb MP3 clip
6.) Voice of Many Waters MP3 clip
7.) Cimbalom MP3 clip
8.) The Beautiful MP3 clip
Purchase double-CDR direct for $13.99
Reviews
"Sense Project is the alias of just-twenty Robert Logan, whose recent Cognessence has rattled some chains in the community. The Sublime is just that, a two-disc set of spiritualized dream tonics carping from beatless industrialisms, early Tangerine Dream initializations, and Eno-esque minimalese that so transcends its antecedents it ends up sounding nothing like them. Serene tones shift imperceptibly like tectonic plates, noises erupt out of nowhere, the atmosphere suddenly flares (“Solar Insect”), yet throughout these series of microevents Logan keeps us on our toes—confounding expectations, jettisoning the pharmacology of the beat for uneasy atmospherics, you can get lost in this one forever."
--Darren Bergstein, Signal To Noise magazine
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"Naming one's release The Sublime reeks of pretension but that may be the only misstep Robert Logan's (aka Sense Project) guilty of on this ambitious double-disc set. It's the most sonically and stylistically wide-ranging of the releases reviewed here, and boasts some truly fine moments. Each piece pursues a different direction, and thus every one brings with it surprise. It's also a less hermetic recording than the others, as Logan opens the studio doors to let vocalist Andrea Black and string players Sarah Sarhandi and Francis Logan contribute; he also broadens out the music's electronic core by integrating bits of field recordings here and there (e.g., “A Moment,” “Éjjel”) which lend the material a more naturalistic character.
After “Vidék,” a dark ambient overture, opens disc one, Black's treated voice appears amidst an equally aqueous surround during “Rain Chimes.” In the title piece, humongous groans echo within a cavernous vault and eventually escalate to become violent screeches. Sarhandi's viola serves as a lovely antidote to such harshness in the subsequent piece, the tranquil setting “Garden,” and “Death and After” provides a suitably meditative and pretty close. The intensity level increases considerably in disc two, and rises to an especially epic level in the possessed “Prime Mover” when the listener is plunged into an electronic maelstrom of industrial churn, and remains there throughout “Shards” before decompressing for the piano-and-strings quietude of “The Lamb.” “Voice of Many Waters” immediately brings the intensity level back up, paving the way for “The Beautiful” which ends the album with fourteen minutes of billowing cloud formations. Though long at two hours, there's much to admire about Logan's accomplished collection.
--Reviewed by www.textura.org
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"Sense Project: From Aphex Twin to Grace Jones on Double-Disc-Debut?
Now here’s a sign of trust: Hypnos Records have decided to make the latest installment on their “Secret Sounds” imprint a double disc release – despite the fact that its mastermind Robert Logan is only nineteen years old. Of course, their faith is well-founded: “The Sublime” follows in the footsteps of soundtrack work on an award winning movie, a much publicised debut album under his civilian name and the announcement that he will be providing “ambient textures and drum edits” for the next Grace Jones album. The risc-factor “The Sublime”, therefore, lies less in the fact that we’re dealing with a promising but as yet still relatively unknown producer here, but in the stylistic outreach of the record, which touches the outer limits of what Hypnos have usually been associated with. One of the earlier pieces to surface was the mesmerising Dronescape “Garden”, which features Sarah Sarhandi on viola. “It's nothing like my usual material”, Robert Logan reveiled on an online forum, “and it might not be everybody's cup of tea.” Reactions were mostly extremely positive however and most of “The Sublime”’s first disc follows in a similar trajectory, with the concluding Death and After (with Francis Logan on violin) a cross reference to “The Garden”.
It is the second disc, which might cause some disturbance, opening with foggy dark ambient draperies, extending into tribal Steve Roach territory on “Shards” and only coming full-circle with the consoling aftermath of “The Beautiful”. The “confrontational Aphex Twin style rhythms” are nowhere to be found on the MP3 extracts provided by the label, but even though these pieces are clearly aligned by a common atmospheric denominator, the variety Logan is able to award to his material is impressive."
--Reviewed by Tobias Fischer for www.tokafi.com
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