You know that movie trope where a character experiences some sort of dissociation or great trauma, expressed through a slow-motion shot of them walking among a crowd with either silence or totally indiscernible sound? A bit like this. Walking around listening to Phantom Brickworks is a guaranteed shortcut to that sensation. The loops, slow and ambient as hell, are at once massively spacious and just present enough to drown out any outside stimuli. Add to that the generally mournful tone (maybe intentional, maybe inevitable due to the near-exclusive use of heavily effected piano and strings), and you've got a recipe for total alienation. It's a neat trick by an ambient album to dominate your consciousness from the background. Listening while grocery shopping last night, I was reminded of another film conceit: the shot of someone standing still in some urban environment as the world moves around them at lightning speed. Maybe a voiceover to tie up the last loose ends of the movie's central philosophy.

I think a lot of people see ambient music as a blank slate, and in many cases I buy that. I could map any vaguely positive or hopeful emotion I've ever felt onto Brian Eno's An Ending (Ascent). But not this. This is a void. Phantom Brickworks is an incredibly apt title; the music is only the merest suggestion of something massive and attention-consuming, near nothingness somehow retaining the effect of the completed whole.

Tiny Mix Tapes did an extremely good bingo-based review of this album; I haven't checked yet, but I'm pretty sure I avoided five in a row.

Highlights: Capel Celyn, Ivy Charcoal, 09:13