2350.org - Namlook II

ambient sampling mixed with some windy tones, which slowly builds in moot intensity. some melodic synth lines begin to take notice, and the ambient tones are highlighted with some alien, vox and swirling sounds zipping on by.

some radio sounding samples are splayed in a distorted musical sense. some namlook doodles are mixed in to keep the music alive. track four brings on some more darkened windy alien soundscapes. easily, these samples could be placed in alien community. there is even klf - chill out moments in track five. track seven brings in a nice low bass loop, but it does not stay around for any length. there are several spoken samples (not in english of course), which seem to infect the sonic ambience.

you must admire the psychedelic ending. i only wish there was more of this.

the biggest problem with the album, is the lack of beats. it is however, still a beautiful cd from namlook.

(review by jackthetab)

An early Namlook live disc, and not to everyone's taste, but to my mind this is a brilliantly realised piece of ambience, a menacing atmosphere permeates the surface early on, but the work constantly evolves, as befits a live recording , even approaching rhythm and melody in the middle section, and again towards the end.

A hard one to characterise (and even find, given its 500 limitation), but if you do manage to track this down I don't think you'll be disappointed.

(review by Martin Jones)

Track one starts this disc off with lots of airy sounds with throbbing bass and things that sound like bugs buzzing. The bass and bugs form a nice rhythmic part.

Next, lots of airy sounds along with some distended bell sounds and ghostly sounding moans that lead into some sampled German radio voices, more bugs, and then the Moog? and synth parts start droning (with bugs). About 20 minutes in, it starts getting more rhythmic with overlapping ambient oddities, then more synth parts. The rhythm parts are not boring, rather it morphs between different styles and some random? drum stuff (hard to explain). The bugs, ambience, drums, and synth fade in and out at varying intervals for the next 30 minutes or so.

Then, the bugs drop out there's a slight synth interlude type thing and then some Laswell type tribal drum parts kick in along with some synthesizer strangeness. This goes along for about 15 minutes or so and then it's back to the airy stuff that started the disc, sounds like a vast wasteland or something.

Then the German radio voices return along with a nice airy synth part, whoops there are the strange drum things again, and those damn bugs again, and that throbbing bass again.

The disc closes out with some very heavily reverbed German radio voices.

OVERALL IMPRESSION: Not a bad disc. The biggest problem with it I think is that it's too much of the same kind of thing and while the first half is cool, the second half sounds like it's just the first half all over again but with a different mix. Not nearly as horrible as many people seem to think.

(review by Steve Luckabaugh)