Back catalogue: Ambient/Drone

Review: User.Exp's first release on Greyscale Recordings provides a thoughtful sonic exploration, made up of field recordings, contact and hydrophone mic sessions and shortwave transmissions (either generated from scratch or really recorded). Artist and label are met with serendipity and ease here; though many releases have hit the Greyscale stocks - all working well within their trademark sonic and visual monochrome - User.Exp's latest is an especially congruent record, bringing crackly burrs and earthen movements to an album that feels large in scope and difficult to pigeonhole, yet intuitively felt. As if to describe a set of 12 different microbiomes - all besieged by a black-and-white, ecosystemic blight - the likes of 'Pollution', 'Erosion' and 'Wind' provide indications enough as to the set of ideas going in here. A deeply calming release, full of textural intricacies and yet not without a creeping sense of unbalance too.