London-based electronic producer Pete Warren divides his time between working as a sound designer, graphic artist and interactive designer, having previously designed the popular FF Amoeba typeface as well as producing music and sound effects for the BBC, and having an involvement in a recent BAFTA award-winning interactive software project. It’s perhaps something of a fitting situation that the BBC have been one of Warren’ srecent clients/employers, as the otherworldly sounds emanating from that studio’ famed Radiophonic Workshop were apparently one of his main influences at an impressionable age, and an early impetus that later lead him to explore 8-bit noises, basic synthesisers and lo-fi experimental industrial music. As its title plainly suggests, Ambient Electronica 94-06 draws together a tracklisting of 14 selected highlights from Warren’ archives over the past 13 years, though I must confess that I found the “ambient” tag to be something of a misleading factor, as much of the material gathered here sits considerably closer to early nineties IDM in the vein of The Black Dog.
If the glacially elegant “Milendrical’ betrays traces of a classical heritage, with tumbling piano arpeggios rippling in Phillip Glass-esque style over sparse downbeat drum rhythms and whistling synth pad harmonics, “Airspace’ hints far more towards Plaid’s melancholy urban-stained IDM, with delicate melodic synth pad sequences gliding over pristine-sounding stripped-down motorik beats. “Distance’ meanwhile signals the entrance of darker undercurrents, with vast slow percussive tones ringing through a dense mass of reverb and dub effects, while chunky breakbeats that call to mind early FSOL roll things forward with relentless momentum, a trajectory that’s also picked up to some degree on darkly robotic electro-IDM offering “Squid.’
By contrast, highlight moment “Wave Thing’ builds faded-out new wave (I swear – no pun intended) atmosphere using wavering synth pads, skittering broken rhythms and the vast repetitive wash of sampled waves that inescapably calls to mind the ghost of Brotherhood-era New Order as the melancholic synth patterns trace their way through the mix. Unfortunately, the relatively minimal liner notes don’ provide any clue as to the relative vintages of the various tracks collected here, but while a substantial portion of Ambient Electronicahas invariably dated in a mid/late nineties IDM fashion, there’s still the unmistakable presence of a mind thinking outside the square amidst the 13 tracks here.
Chris Downton
