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It’s not very often that such beautifully melodic ambient music is found outside of Hollywood; in fact it almost seems that the two concepts would be mutually exclusive. Either you have an ambient mood which should be more about conveying a landscape, or you have a melody which should be something that you can dance to. For the second day in a row, I’m glad my misconceptions have been proven wrong.

Transmutation is Disparition’s latest release that has been in the works for more than a year and a half. By combining dark synth sounds with a piano that might seem too “light” at first, each song stands alone telling a story of a post-apocalyptic world, where anarchy is the only true form of rule. In your mind, you can easily picture near-chaos mixed with fear; buildings burning, rubble everywhere.

The disc opens with the very dark, but still uplifting “Atom and If” whose title is rather fitting, as the name is a play on the names of the two people in the Garden of Eden: Adam and Eve. The choice of words though, seems to represent a more scientific take on it, which would explain the buildup, yet with an almost scientific preciseness that only a robot from the year 2284AD could deliver.

If the entire album is a search for freedom in the world that has since been reduced to near-nothingness, “Locke and Demosthenes” would be it’s antithesis. While every other song on the album seems to have a very negative view on where society is headed, “Locke & Demosthenes” portrays a very different view; one where enough effort can yield fantastic results. The melody gives a sense of almost celebration, which I can only imagine would become the anthem of salvation in an otherwise destroyed planet.

After listening to it for nearly 3 hours, I still cannot come up with a bad thing to say about this album. The time and energy that Disparition put into it is very apparent, and even though it was a completely solo project, it comes across as full and rounded. Not only is the song writing incredibly unique and well pieced together, the production quality of the entire record definitely feels professional through and through. Definitely recommended if you want to experience what life could be like after World War III.

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Over the weekend, I was spending time on my favorite internet forum SomethingAwful, and was presented with the opportunity to listen to a brand new album that one of a member had just finished recording. At first, I was a little apprehensive. I don’t usually like downloading full albums before I get the chance to hear a sample or two so as not to waste valuable time and disk space. But something about it grabbed me. I’m not sure if it was the title (“Sun Tales”), or the fact that it was simply labelled “Folk-Rock”; all I know is that for the first the first time in a long time, I’m glad my first instincts were wrong.

As I waited for the album to download, I started reading the reviews that fellow forumgoers had given him. The first comment in the thread was by someone going by the moniker Toastmaker; he wrote “A completely beautiful album.”

Well, that’s a good start.

The second comment, by JohnnySnitch, reads “Very nice album!” So, ok, maybe this won’t be a complete waste of time. On and on through the thread, the compliments keep coming, with nary a bad word amongst them. At this point, I was definitely over my so-called fear, and maybe even a bit excited. After all, the SomethingAwful forum members aren’t exactly known for their sugar coating; if they’re praising it, there’s got to be a least some reason for it.

15 minutes later (stupid slow Bermudian internet), the album was finished traversing the world wide web and had landed on my laptop. I unpacked the archive with anticipation, and threw on track number 9, “A Voice On The Wind”, the song that had received the most praise.

I was definitely not disappointed with what I heard.

A beautiful love song, very obviously sung from the heart, paints the very melodramatic picture of a past love lost. Waxing nostalgic about an old flame, you immediately feel a connection with Krueger, empathizing and sympathizing with him all at once. While being a very mellow song, it has the ability to send a flood of similar emotions through the listeners head, reminding them of their first true love. Being the only melancholy song on the album, it definitely stands out from the rest, but also fits perfectly between the other emotion-driven songs.

The 10th track on the disc, “Suriel And Azrael And Many Other Names [sic]” starts out with a very powerful guitar, but even so, you can almost feel Krueger holding back. A song about youth misunderstanding, you can almost feel the pure innocence coming from the speaker as if transporting you back to your childhood, naive and curious. It ends with an aural montage of sound bites from various news sources, mainly about the war in Iraq, bring the listener back from childhood, stripping away that same innocence that was granted mere minutes ago.

This album is raw in every sense of the word. Recorded in what I can only assume is his basement or living room with just himself and his guitar, each and every song brings you into his world, into his little bubble, and shares with you his most intimate of experiences. Throughout the entire journey, it almost feels as if you’ve been given a seat next to him in a time machine, as he narrates the intricacies of his entire life.

I could truly go on and on about how amazing this album is. I could write 10 pages on why you should do whatever you can to obtain a copy of this album, but it still wouldn’t do it justice. Sun Tales is a beatiful story told by a beautiful poet. This is absolutely what music should be about.

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