The House in the Woods

Martin Jenkisn has been making quite a name for himself in the murkier side of the electronic music scene over the past year or so. Or at least a name for his main project Pye Corner Audio. He himself often hides behind the moniker Head Technician. From his first two Black Mill Tapes volumes that got a release on Type last spring and his debut on Ghost Box "Sleep Games" last autumn to this springs tape and EP releases there's been two clear strands to his productions, one brooding techno influenced side and one more ambient (on occasion almost kosmische) side. On his latest full length release, this time under new nome de guerre The House in the Woods it is the side that's taken over the proceedings completely. Or at least almost,

When I listen to "Bucolica" I'm reminded of those GAS albums Wolfgang Voigt put out in the nineties. They were like hazy chill outs after that eras raves, sonic pictures of Voigt relaxing after a week long trance trip in the Black Forest. The beats from the rave still echoing in the distant. "Bucolica" is more like someone trying to come down after a full night of shaking the booty at the Belbury Youth Club, and having retired to the haunted woods nearby, just next to the old abandoned cottage of that seventeenth century witch.

Jenkins has tapped in to that same sphere of beat centered ambient. The drones are in the center but the rhythms are never far away, slowly building and coersing the listener along to an almost trance like state. So enough with the contrived descriptions: this is a great ambient piece, brooding yet somehow strangely uplifting. (There's links to radiophonics and Howlrounds excellent "The Ghosts of Bush" album as well.) It's richness in detail rewards the patient listener. This is an album that needs to listened to repeatedly, to be fully appreciated. Something I've already done, very little else has made it into my iPod over the last week. It's an amazing album that manages to build a sonic world all it's own with seemingly simple elements. This is surely an album that's destined for my personal top ten albums of the year.