TR JORDAN Vinyl & CDs

Review: Dwell Time II is the second part of a three-part project on Past Inside The Present from T.R. Jordan. Each of the albums was made using the same material in the same time frame, and they are all part of one overarching and coherent suite that he refers to as "musical composting." This is the cassette tape version and it is full of grainy, fluttering howls, soft warbling pads, pastoral references like flowing streams and mossy rocks and plenty of grand spatial elegance that harks back to the likes of Hiroshi Yoshimura and early Brian Eno experiments. Another immersive offering from this fine label, then.

Review: Vital US ambient label Past Inside The Present welcomes Washington, D.C-based composer T.R. Jordan for a debut album that is focussed on the evolution "of personal relationships and the paths they take." The artist has formerly performed as The Greatest Hoax and here delves deep into contemporary classical and ambient music with a lo-fi feel and real sense of longing. The pads unfold slowly in gentle arcs, static drifts across the arrangements and muffled guitars peak through bleak clouds like little rays of hope. It is a work of subtle art and devastating emotionality.

Review: Given the amounts of collaborations he undertakes, Past Inside The Present boss zake is not so much musically sociable as utterly gregarious. He's also one to choose a good theme with which to imbue his musical productions with definable atmospherics. This collaborative effort with T.R. Jordan has water at its heart, with field recordings captured on the coast of Lake Erie - which straddles the US/Canadian border - fed into the mixes, giving them a distinctive psycho-geography. Spread over four slow moving tracks, including 'Stay With Me' with ghostly vocals by the aptly named marine eyes, the arrangements revolve around the sound of traditional and electronic pianos interplaying. That said, all the meticulous detail and sonic trimmings you'd expect from a Past Inside The Present release are in there too, working away in the background.