Off Land is a project by Tim Dwyer. Oh where to start with his album Field Tangents. As long as I’ve been into music that has this type of meditative stillness it seems like people are either fully on board or just don’t seem to get it or dismiss it calling it boring. I’m fully in the former and have had a love affair with artists like Stars of the Lid, Fennesz, Windy & Carl and many others of the ilk. Dwyer seems to get where this music needs to go and doesn't avoid going straight to the center of the bullseye.
Ambient albums like these benefit from cohesion and a seamless quality. There are sixteen tracks total but I need to almost feel like it’s one hum emitted from the same source. Take for instance Ambient 1: Music for Airports by Brian Eno which is often considered the best ambient album of all time. If you listen to that album there is just no denying the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It seems to be emanating from the same source. And of course there are some moments and pieces on Field Tangents which you might prefer but for me it had that quality I look for in albums like this. The source of the material seemed to be a balance between nature and our dreams. Dwyer draws you in with field recordings of nature, Sometimes it sounds like kids playing in the street, other times you can hear birds and other things in an environment. These field recordings find themselves in a symbiotic relationship with warm drones, hums and a variety of synths and sounds. These songs have the feeling as if you are observing from a former life. The field recordings are ghostly and feel like shadows of the past. That being said it’s not coming from a place of terror. The tones and textures paint soundscapes that pull you into serenity and tranquility. What you are really never confronted with is dissonance like that you might hear on a track like “Rainfall” by Fennesz some or “Narkopop 6” by Gas. There is a sense of purity here that lands closely to the album art. It’s something like this. As you submerge yourself in a body of water to cleanse, you lay there still and for a brief moment as you gaze into the horizon, your mind settles and the cosmos aligns.
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