Robert Babicz

Desert is an instrumental work of incredible subtlety, a collection of 12 intricate, evocative audio collages that are a good indication of the current state of ambient music. Babicz's work is unobtrusive, fragmentary and elusive, operating at an almost subconscious level. Utilising sounds for their textural qualities as much as their rhythmic or tonal aspects, Babicz creates pieces so delicate and amorphous that it often seems a miracle that they hold together. Odd glitches, static, clicks and pops are sampled, looped and turned into compositional events, in much the same way as they are present in the music of Pole, Pan Sonic and others working in the realm of microscopic sound. These elements are layered over rich washes of blurry, throbbing tones, flickering electronic sounds and a variety of indefinable organic sounds. Haunting, cinematic minimalism, in the tradition of artists such as PGR, Vidna Obmana and of course, Brian Eno (whose album On Land could be considered a distant predecessor to Desert). An album that requires and rewards deep listening.