To be honest, I began listening to this album while I was preparing to go out and finished when I got back home. I was noting stuff in my diary for the first time in ages and put my headphones on even though my tinnitus is worse than ever.
Just for the record... I had a few drinks before writing the following review. I just wrote it down because I felt the need to. And I am happy I could understand what I wrote since I did it in almost pitch darkness.
First thing I noticed when I pressed replay was that airplane sound I only ever heard in the countryside, in the village I spent each summer til' I was 12 or 13 or 14. Heard also the rain there. The sound of water dripping is such a special sound if heard in the right context. And this album is strangely close to nature, almost getting inside of you.
I was doubting things like wishes, the love I feel, connection to various people in my life, personal things I would have loved to deal with in a natural environment. But I now feel as if I am in a forest on the beach at the countryside. I've actually noted all this down in a notebook. That's how organic the urge is (was). Madness, I tell you.
You can only identify love by how your estimation of time changes. When this album finished, I gladly could press replay. God praise music for it is a wonder.
Substrata is a cinematic experience, close to Peter Gabriel's EVE. This review is not an objective one. (the album) filled me with too much emotion. If you are about to just press play in a hurry and skip through it, than I recommend you to mind your own business since I would mind you doing so even if I were dead rotten for 10 years, in a grave. This is the kind of album that you share as an initiation for a very intimate bonding audition. Kind of like a family album which also includes embarrassing pictures.
The voice samples come up like... like the one you love/miss is suddenly next to you just while you were actually sweetly thinking of them. And generally, the second half is like being about to set a perfect dream as reality.
Tracklist:
1. As The Sun Kissed The Horizon2. Poa Alpina
3. Chukhung
4. The Things I Tell You
5. Times When I Know You'll Be Sad
6. Hyperborea
7. Kobresia
8. Antennaria
9. Uva-Ursi
10. Sphere Of No-Form
11. Silene