73 minutes, 35 seconds

Numina
Evolving Visions

Numina is one Jesse Sola, and apart from having collaborated with Caul on 2004's Inside the Hollow Realm, he's managed to fly under the ambient radar. But as they say at Amazon.com, if you like Steve Roach and Vidna Obmana, you'll like Numina.

If that sounds like a backhanded compliment, it's not; I don't mean to reduce Sola to a clone of his more famous peers. For one thing, he works with a different sound palette, one at times more aggressive and at others more soothing than either Obmana's or Roach's. The tracks on this album veer from choral prettiness (think John Foxx) to clanking insistence (think Raison d'Être) and back again, all while retaining their individual timbre.

I also like how Sola gets away with incorporating percussive elements without making them sound explicitly "tribal." In other words, he's not out to remake Dreamtime Return, as so many other ambient musicians seem tempted to do. (And thank God for that--I can't stand Dreamtime Return.)

And now, dear readers (or should that be singular?), a question for you: If you listen to industrial music, are you also a fan of ambient music? And if so, which artists? I wonder how much crossover there is. Please comment!

Also today:

73:34 Allerseelen, Edelweiss
73:34 :Wumpscut:, Preferential Legacy
73:33 Funker Vogt, Navigator
73:33 Raison d'Être, Collective Archives (CD 1 of 2)
73:32 Dead Jump, Immortal
73:32 Steve Roach, Texture Maps
73:32 Virtual Space Industrial, Gehenna
73:31 Steve Roach, Immersion: Two
73:30 Dark Sanctuary, Les Mémoires Blessées