Drone Records

SLOAN, JASON - Deluge

Format: CD

Label & Cat.Number: Gterma 039

Release Year: 2014

Note: minimalistic dark synth ambience from the U.S., after many CDRs the first "fabric-pressed" CD, a soundtrack to "capture the aftermath of our world after having suffered through a grand deluge"--"The continuous live-set is an inner world ambient affair drifting into ethereal lands as it smoothly changes shape and reveals intrinsic motion along the way. Headphones are essential to discover the many fine details and hypnotic realm embedded in the carefully molded, overtly minimalist atmospherics" [Sonic I.]

Price (incl. 19% VAT): €13.00

More Info

If we have any StillStream fanatics here chances are you might remember this performance, which originally streamed live on the Sadayatana show back in 2011. Although then presented without title, Jason intended for this piece to capture the aftermath of our world after having suffered through a grand deluge. gterma are very happy to bring back to life again this emotional recording. Jason has also kindly composed for us a brand new epilogue which now closes the album. Comes in jewel case with 16-page booklet.

gterma021to040.blogspot.com/p/gterma039-jason-sloan-deluge.html

"Jason Sloan is a US-based new media & sound artist, electronic musician, composer whose sonic creations explores immateriality and its connection in memory, systems and the virtual world.

“Deluge” contains his performance, which was originally streamed live on Stillstream’s Sadayatana program August 2011, which intended to capture the aftermath of our world after having suffered through a grand deluge.
For the cd-release, the 60-minute dark-ambient recording though has been extended by a brand new epilogue which now closes the album.

The continuous live-set is an inner world ambient affair drifting into ethereal lands as it smoothly changes shape and reveals intrinsic motion along the way. Headphones are essential to discover the many fine details and hypnotic realm embedded in the carefully molded, overtly minimalist atmospherics, which all received the balanced, delicate and refined mastering touch of Anders Peterson.

The epilogue is a soft and warm soundscape wandering, opening up melancholic farscapes as it drifts and evolves onward.
All in all, “Deluge” makes an impressive and imaginary ambient listen. Recommended.
Website: www.jasonsloan.com" [Sonic Immersion]

"In the case of “Deluge” by Jason Sloan we’re dealing with a recording of a live performance on StillStream Radio on the 5th of August 2011. From what I read in the booklet, the broadcast was transmitted in a non-legal (let’s not beat about the bush, just pirate) way in Baltimore and the surrounding area. Guerilla ambient – I like it.

For many years, Jason Sloan has been bouncing on the edges of the ambient scene releasing several albums, most of them in his own label SloBor Media. Perhaps his contact with gterma will cause that he’ll reach this fifty or hundred people more – as for a minimalist ambient it’s quite much anyway, and the material contained on “Deluge” or rather “Live On Sadayatana – Deluge” indicates that the musician definitely deserves it.

“Blue Star” is a long, slowly developing set of drones, bathed in soft sound haze. Torn from the impression of space-time and drifting aimlessly in the night sky. Although I may be wrong with this “space” term as it has a specific American taste. In my mind’s eye I see strange lights flashing in the sky over the Arizona desert, and in the back of my head the name of Steve Roach begins to form. At the beginning and at the end (not only in this piece) there are some pieces of radio transmission somewhere in the background, which further enhances the sense of non-existence and emptiness, where past, present and future meet.

“ElevenEleven” continues this minimalist journey, where it ‘s difficult to talk about a destination. Although it seems like the music has taken a bit darker direction. As if somewhere in the distance a vortex of unknown provenance appears, absorbing everything it encounters on its way, no matter whether it is a material being or not. Oh, this music fits to my taste, oh it fits. Teetering on the verge of dark ambient but not throwing itself into the dark void, so that I should have advised Jason to send the music to Cyclic Law or Malignant.

Low drones can be found in “The Fifth World”, but at the same time there is more contrast between them and the fetching synth melodies, so I have the impression that this track has the richest sound in the whole CD. “Deluge” is somehow the closest to “The Fifth World”; it’s added to extend the album’s length, but it is not a bad track, on the contrary. It sounds a bit better than the other ones, but not different enough that the album can’t be treated as a homogeneous journey into the unknown.

As always in gterma releases, the booklet contains several atmospheric photographs, which in my opinion this time not entirely correspond to the images projected by my mind. But in fact this is a little thing that cannot affect my overall positive opinion. I would take such trips more often." [Santa Sangre]