Quote:...The album ends with “A Final Kiss On Poison Cheeks,” which aside from some overdubbed bells and cymbals is another live track. ... this is where the bathyspheric calm Ambarchi has spent so much time attaining gives way to palpable thrills. Bursts of static and torn high-frequency fragments blow across the rising drones like airborne debris before a gale, building and thickening and blackening for the better part of twenty minutes; if you’ve ever wanted Ambarchi to just rock the f*ck out, your wish is granted here. Then the music opens into a plateau of bell and sine tones, serene and gorgeous. The lighter they get, the more distant the tolling bass, the more you feel the pressure remit. Bob Seger sang quite persuasively about “Heavy Music”; Ambarchi makes it."

Iota Wrote:Anders Ilar - A Day Ago

Quote:...all the central elements of contemporary electronic drone are here: a sustained and hypnotically shifting backbone, subterranean throbs, and a fluttering array of non-musical sounds dancing around it all. However, BJ is in a league by himself in regards to meticulousness, exactitude, and discipline. There is no clutter or bloat here, no laziness, and no attempt to use density to create an illusion of power and depth. Instead, Nilsen very starkly and crisply conveys exactly what he needs to and no more. In lesser hands, that degree of calculation and artifice would probably result in a bloodless and clinical-sounding album. Actually, I suppose it is not completely unreasonable to describe this album as “clinical,” but it would be totally missing the point. The Invisible City is a deliberately cold, lonely, and futuristic-sounding album. ...