James Plotkin & Brent Gutzeit - Mosquito Dream (CD)

All Music Guide

"Designed for low-level listening," reads the liner notes, which is as good a way to describe this collaborative record as any other phrase. Embracing a dark, ambient style sure to appeal to fans of outfits like Lull -- as can especially be heard on the dank echo and ghostly moans of "Cloud Cover," probably the album's creepiest moment -- Mosquito Dream is a minimal series of compositions that still somehow suggests vast, open, and dead spaces. Drawing on a series of "deconstructions" recorded over four years' time, the six-song album makes for one mysterious zoneout of a listen, starting with the looming tones of the title track, an introduction that sets the tone for everything to follow. Things turn even chillier with "Sand Scroll," where more recognizable feedback -- though drawn out and extended into a cool, unsettling, high-pitched drone -- creates a feeling somewhere between meditation and threat that increases with the even more ghostly second part of the song. Some songs have ...distinct parts or at least shift, however subtly, between one kind of drifting note and another, interspersing frigid howls of sound with brief respites, but more common is the seemingly endless slow-up and down-wash present in "Halo," a very subtly rhythmic but still obsessively focused composition. Things are not always quite so apocalyptic, or at least seemingly on the edge of it -- "Wires," in the midst of rolling washes of heavily treated noise that Thomas Köner would be proud of, has a few straightforward, gentle electric guitar notes, a bit of a ghost in the machine. Then there's the concluding "Mosquito Veil," which is so subsonic as to almost be nonexistent, at least without turning the volume up and consequently destroying one's subwoofer. - Ned Raggett, All Music Guide Read more Less