This series is one of the initial projects that has helped the Faxlabel gain such high respect and the solid reputation it deserves. Not only has it become a kind of benchmark collection of long-duration blissful ambient sessions, but it also integrates many techniques that various producers of whooshy, voluminous synthscapes have experimented with over the past two decades, and then some. As the liner notes reveal, some of the tracks are simply excerpts from longer live recordings executed at Tetsu Inoue's apartment in New York City.

Oftentimes, a song will focus in on an interesting feature of a melodic riff or perhaps the concentrated flux of wave reverberations, and then that event is expanded upon and carried to a conclusion while the listener is provided with time to chill in each moment. This music fuses intensity and meditative relaxation in such a way that it provides an effective backdrop for reading, cogitating, or dreaming. Most of the criticisms leveled at this project seem to stem from people with short attention spans ("that disc doesn't go anywhere") or from those with little tolerance for this kind of sustained ambient experimentalism ("it all sounds like wind tunnels"). My advice is to take the creators' advice: "These sounds are rather heard than listened to..."

Make no mistake, 2350 Broadway is the sound of two masters innovating, realtime. Even after the disc stops playing, the minimalistic melodies and gentle movements stay with you. Each disc is spacey, emotional, intense, and timeless. The curious production style accumulates and becomes more focused with each successive volume. Also, each one seems to pick up where the last one left off. Plus, the whole series is so silky that you can practically start the next disc a few minutes before the previous disc is done playing (and you'll need a mixer for that trick). I've done this a few times when listening to several installments back-to-back. And let's not forget that although the series still remains a trilogy after several years, 2 of the albums were issued in double CD format. So there's upwards of 5.5 hours of stuff to hear. Grab a deep chair and take in the progress of modern beatless beauty unfolding right before your ears. Originally issued in a quantity of 500 in September of 1993, this first album proves to be a solid foundation on which much would be built. In fact this album, above so many prized others (including Ambiant Otaku, Shades of Orion, and Sequential), was voted on the Ambient email list to be reissued on Namlook's Ambient World label a couple years back to satisfy the many Internet Faxheads yearning to own it. Apparently, the claims made on the mailing list overemphasized just how many people planned to buy the reissue and Namlook ended up with a pile of extras. This is similar to the Ambiant Otaku reissue situation, which still hangs in limbo (check http://www.xmission.com/~ear/ for more details). Because of this overabundance, fans are still able to find all 3 volumes of the 2350 Broadway albums for sale, although spotting 2350 Broadway II is becoming increasingly difficult these days.

Much like the seemingly crazed fans who would practically sacrifice body parts to secure their own copies of rare albums, the musicians that make them must often go to great lengths to find the special instruments used to produce the desired sounds. One of main sound sources for this first album was a an EMS Synthi. These are legendary pieces of equipment that many musicians claim have no equal. Here the vintage Synthi is placed in a modern electronic studio context and its inner workings are explored and its seamless textures revealed. The machine produces a glistening stream of sound which our duo uses generally as the background for their pieces. Of course, 2350 Broadway is hardly anything more but background, but somehow these guys keep the textures interesting enough to just sit and listen them. Each sound surface is rich and full of fine detail that readily keeps my attention.

Disk 1

• Vision of Pulse - What a way to start it out. A gargantuan wind tunnel and loop of chimes launches you immediately into spacious uncharted territory. Feel the cool aural breeze gently usher you into a chamber of endless proportions. After a few minutes, the chime pattern begins to change, the loop sequence is altered by a few added notes. Meanwhile, distant sound waves ripple high above the stratosphere. I found that this track began to grow on me only after I gained familiarity, through many listens, with how the piece proceeds. For me, the real fun beings at around the 17-minute mark, those next 6 or 7 minutes are pure gold. The mood shifts noticeable to a more serious, introspective pose and a lead synth takes the spotlight. The notes are carefully executed, each tone is crucial in the overall formation. Later, a huge synth wave rises and breaks over your temporal lobes like some analog tsunami, and the subsequent reverberant forces wash all in its path out into an endless sea....

• Raga - Listening to this track on headphones can be compared to watching a match of intergalactic ping-pong. The delays are panned hard to the left and right. Most of the sounds you here in this track are processed in this way. We begin with some plastic tapping toms sounds, with a slowly rising layer of background synth. A hi-hat now, through the same echo pattern. Gradually, other sounds are gated in, fragments of speech, or just aliased squelchy noises sounding like language segments. All bouncing the elements front, left, and right while the backing sound slowly builds. It doesn't really get rambunctious until about 14 minutes. The voices become more explicit, and many of the sounds are swirling and tilting around. Finally more computer chirps and a wind down begins at around 20 minutes. The bleeps become more like an intentional malfunctioning loop, ending the piece.

• Tokai - A bonus segment with more rounded computer blips and a powerful recurring bass hum that will blow your speakers if you aren't careful. Tokai works best for me at lower volumes, this puts the hum at a tolerable level and blends the bleeping sequences (which are similar to those in the previous track Raga) with any other incidental sounds occurring in the room.

• Hands of Light - The song takes up the entire length of the disc and is indexed every 10 minutes for the listener's convenience. This is the only song with beats in the entire trilogy, and it's a good one. Because it is so long, I'll go through the various phases by track # and list the appropriate times that they occur:
  • #1) Start-10' The first few minutes serve as an intro, with the opening melodic theme emerging at the 5 minute mark.

  • #2) 10'-20' The jetstream tones steadily grow.

  • #3) 20'-30' A few moments later the beat is set: a distant, thundering rhythm appears that will continue weaving around for the next 10 minutes or so. The beats stay contantly in motion and the echoes bounce around a seemingly endless sphere-shaped room. The bass drum projects a tactile series of compressions and rarefactions from the center region while thumps reflect off the invisible wall somewhere on the other side of you. At 2:32 a groundshaking feedback erupts. For the next 10 minutes or so the rhythmic drift is sustained and then later vanishes.

  • #4 and 5) 30'-50' Somewhere in segment 4 a drone takes over while remaining traces of jetstream are swept away. Now it sounds as if we've gone subterranean with the vibrations from the veins of natural water lines. The drone builds with the occasional undulating disturbance and becomes decorated with Dune-like synths chords. Things get quiet toward the end.

  • #6) 50'-60' By now you definitely be off in REM-land if you've put this on for sleep time. A new 3-tone theme appears.

  • #7) 60'-70' At this point, Hands of Light becomes a kind of gentle mixture of everything up to here, distant wisps of sounds bubble up ever so quietly.

  • #8) 70-72 The drop off...

  ---

  What did you think of this CD? Mail your reviews to 2350.org

  FAX Reviews and Tracklistings

  www.2350.org