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Reviews: Magic Sound Fabric - Uplift Drift By Matt Howarth - Sonic
Curiosity: This music excellently bridges galactic sensibilities with earthbound sentiments. The astral airs are grounded by the savory rhythms, rendering solid parallels between the outward urge and the security of familiar terrain. Expansive regions become compressed into regions that mirror the potential of the human mind. These solid compositions exhibit an intriguing fusion of funk with ambience, resulting in a highly appealing sound that is exhilarating with peaceful grooves. While the general mode is easy-going, this relaxation is tempered with a pleasant power that churns and seethes, tantalizing the audience with rhythmic melodies that uplift while maintaining an amiable drift. By Bill Binkleman
- Wind and Wire: Track titles give an indication of the futuristic slant to the synthesizers employed by Akhunaton. "Levitation Groove" starts the party out with snazzy jazzy synth horns, earthy hand drums, and finger-popping snares and high hats. The nine-minute long "Photonic Phonic" opens with a juxtaposition of crickets (!) with Berlin-esque laser synths, before the beats (reminiscent of artists like A Positive Life and Pentatonik) and silky synth strings carry you off on a cushion of cyberspace tuneage. The remaining seven tracks all offer something to recommend them, in varying degrees. As I stated above, Akhunaton knows how to expertly layer his keyboards and rhythm tracks and he delivers a ton of dancy, semi-trancy, always groovy ear candy throughout Uplift Drift. I dug the opening scratch beats and later hip hop rhythms on "Astro Dream Stream" played out against a backdrop disco-fied guitar licks and ethereal synth notes. Admittedly, not everything was a big hit with me, though. I wasn't overly fond of "My Thoughts Have Become Visible" even with its cool tribal hand percussion elements and mysterious echoed piano - it was a little too much of an island jam-track for me, with lots of synth horn work. But kicky cuts like "Dimension Shift" featuring blooping/bleeping synth effects, downtempo snare beats and cyber-jazzy piano and lush strings picked me right back up again. I don't know if this is Magic Sound
Fabric's (Akhunaton's) first effort. If it is, it's an amazingly
strong debut. Uplift Drift is a confident and accomplished recording
of beat-driven electronic ambient music. While the music is a
little too revved up at times to be labeled as 100% chill-out
(as I view it), it may just be a matter of semantics (one man's
chill is another's dance music, so to speak). The album is a lot
better than some recent efforts from Waveform (I think it¹s
also better than any of the A.D. compilations, which have not
dated well, in my opinion). If you liked those CDs and are looking
for the next step in dub-style ambient music with a degree of
chill to it, Magic Sound Fabric has just what the music doctor
ordered. Recommended." Bill Binkleman - Wind and
Wire Over hovering streams, sprightly brass sounds and a burbling bass are prominently revealed as My Thoughts Have Become Visible. Piano tones twinkle like stars above the elasticized lows of Octave Surfing, while faint drumbeats spatter. The voices of Space Traffic Control are intermittently heard in a final flourish of rhythmically resonant drum-n-drift which is laced with guitar-like jangles and distant flutations. Consistently smooth aural tapestries
from Magic Sound Fabric waft in curtains of beat-driven ambient
floes; take an Uplift Drift into intoxicating soundworlds that
are everything their title implies. Sweetly grooving stuff!"
-AmbiEntrance.org This CD is very good in the audio sense also... Clean tight mixes, an obvious amount of work went into the recordings presented here. Terms like "attention to detail" come to mind. It seems a lot of attention was also paid to the psyco-acoustic realm, where sound images drift in, out and past the listener during their journey. Check this one out on headphones !! The orchestration and rhythms are top notch and totally original. I think Magic Sound Fabric has carved out a signature sound here. Working in a genre where there is precious little "Dub" oriented music that smoothly blends elements of Ambient, Reggae, Experimental Electronic and good old Space Music, I would think this CD is poised for major exposure and acceptance in an otherwise cluttered music industry. The CD features full art work and professional packaging unlike many indie artists. The label, Spiralight, has really pulled out all the stops in quality indie music distribution. I hope to see it grow as well. All in all, Uplift Drift is a valued addition to any CD collection regardless of musical taste, but especially to those of us who enjoy good electronic music! Good work, Magic Sound Fabric! Reviewed by Roger Foote of Distant Waves
"Uplift Drift" is a great ambient album which got my head nodding almost immediately after pressing play. The easy, rolling beats keep this album moving nicely along, interwoven with a more oldschool ambient synth sound. The tracks that really stood out
on this album were "Photonic Phonic", a lively ambient
track with good sequencing, and "Galaxy Rise", an excellent
track -- an excellent mix of ethereal ambient sounds with piano
and solid beats. This album is ending up in my ambient music stack
right next to Global Communication. - DJ
Dusty Downtempo.org
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