Steve Roach/Erik Wøllo - The Road Eternal [Projekt - 2011]“The Road Eternal” offers up an enjoyable and rewarding mixture of: expansive ambience, soaring atmospheric guitar textures, lite-techno ambient beat scapes, and genreal melodic & atmospheric ambient electronics. The album brings together highly respected US ambient artist Steve Roach with Norwegian mood maker & ambient guitar -scaper Erik Wøllo for their second collaboration following 2008’s “Stream Of Thought”. Each track on offer here sees the pair weaving together a wonderful partnership of build and receding beats scapes, analogue and digital synths textures, and felt to soaring processed guitar / guitar synths textures. The album offers up six tracks in all and each track lasts between the four and a half minute to twenty one minutes a picec; through most of the tracks hit near or around the ten minute mark- so the pair get chance to nicely explore their melodic and atmospheric themes, and the listener gets time to get nicely submerge in the tracks unfold & ebb. Most of the tracks here have some beat based electronic or subtle ethno rytmic element present, and these nicely drift in and out of the tracks structures. Through there are a few purely synth ‘n’ processed guitar tracks that nicely add contrast & more subtle mood making edge to the album as a whole. There’s nothing really experimental or edgy about “The Road Eternal”, but if you enjoy well-made, melodic and atmospheric up-beat ambience & mellow beat ribbed electrioncia you’ll find a lot to enjoy here. Roger Batty
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