Well, last time I talked about The Serpent in Quicksilver, an eighteen minute EP with six tracks, that Harold Budd released in 1981. In this follow-up, there are only two tracks, the title track and Dark Star, but they’re each longer than the entire Serpent in Quicksilver EP, Dark Star clocking in at 20 minutes and the title track at twenty-three. This is, I have to say, more my speed. Both tracks are built around long, long synthesizer notes, minor keys, deep ambient backgrounds and a whole lot of atmosphere. I wish I was better at talking about ambient music or explicating what makes some ambient music good and some bad, you know, beyond the very obvious. I suppose some people would listen to Abandoned Cities and ask me where the particular genius lies or why couldn’t anyone just create these sound beds? Well, I don’t know. I just know greatness when I hear it and this is great music. It’s perfectly textured for headphones, but also great for driving, particularly night driving. And, well, here’s a thing I can say about it. Even with both of these tracks being over twenty minutes long, in whatever setting I would be listening to them, on my ear-buds or on my commute or what-have-you, every time one of them would start to slowly fade down, it would surprise me. I would listen to these tracks for twenty minutes and not really realize the time was going by. And every time, I would be a little sad that the track was ending because I just wanted the mood to continue. Twenty minute tracks that you put on a loop . . . now that’s saying something. 4 stars.
tl;dr – ambient masterpiece is only two tracks, but beautiful, transporting, moody and wonderful tracks they are; a forty-five minute bed of sound that you’ll wish was twice as long. 4 stars.