Felix NEill

Brock Van Wey has been building a fantastic catalogue of dub techno and ambient work for a few years now and is showing no signs of slowing down just yet. Indeed the opposite seems to be true as he follows his stunningly beautiful 2 CD set "White Clouds Drift On And On" from earlier this year with this equally exceptional album released in a criminally limited edition of just 300 hand numbered and assembled copies on his own Quietus imprint.

Stepping ever further away from the techno and beats (muted though they were) and calmly diving into the soft, warm pool of immersive ambient, this guy is delivering something really special at the moment and for my money is making the best ambient music there has been for years.

"We Were The Sun" is in a similar vein to "White Clouds..." but if anything is even better. Huge suspended chords hang heavily in the mist around you. Droning choral and string tones lift you up on a bed of warm air and transport you to distant beaches, faraway lands. Abnormally extended guitar plucks wrap a warm blanket around your weary head and kiss away your troubles as you drift off to sleep. You get the picture. This is beautiful. I feel like I'm being taken care of.

There's echoes of Eno (natch) and especially his work with Harold Budd. This is lusher, though. Better. Weirdly modern yet absolutely timeless. This is working for me not only as a functional ambient (I'm not going to use the term chill out, but you know what I mean), but also as a rewarding close-listening experience.

Head over to his BvDub site where there are many of his earlier works available to download. If you get a move on, you will be able to grab one of the few remaining copies from here. In the meantime, come on in. The water's lovely.

320 Kbps.

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