Anduin

For his second album Jonathan Lee draws on two years of recording and performance - and it's not just his own material that's used for the record either.  'Abandoned In Sleep' features studio recordings, sample edits and collaborative work with artists including Xela, Jasper TX, Svarte Greiner, Stephen Vitiello and Gareth Davis among others.  This album is all about dark, nocturnal ambience and combines a variety of half-dreamed soundscapes together for every track: Xela's falsetto murmurings clash with deep synth swells and scratchy, rhythmically organised field recordings on 'The Equal Of God', before distant footsteps and what sounds like a Doppler effected harmonica drape 'Contents Of A Black Box' in a kind of doomy, sub-bass buffeted blues feel.  Chugging drones and low frequency bowed strings arise on 'Our Future Is A Debt', lacing the soundscape with rattling sonic detritus.  Rumbling and layered bass exercises tend to be at the heart of this record, and there's none more haunting than 'Autumn Looming', an album highlight that plays to Anduin's greatest strengths - jostling rhythmic loops made from interrupted electronics and clattering incidental sounds merging into a sludgy dark ambience that punds irregularly with thunderous bass drum hits, making for one of the most sonically rich entries on the album.  More haunting still is the Dag Rosenqvist-aided 'Labyrinthian Void', an all-encompassing turbine hum of low-end presence mixed in with shoots of distortion and squeaky door hinges.  The CD edition comes with a further two bonus cuts: 'Filed Away' (an installation for Manchester's Startrunning) and 'Black River', a live performance with Svarte Greiner that closes the album with an immense nightmarish exchange of tones - like ships' horns sounding off through fog. A quietly epic, dense and harrowing sonic experience - do not miss. (BOOMKAT)