An epic understatement expressed through blissful drones, Near and Faraway is a collaborative album between Italian sound-sculptor Fabio Orsi and Australian ambient artist Seaworthy (Cameron Webb). For this release, the artists each composed their own piece and then worked together for a third, yielding gorgeously earnest results that can invoke the smell of wet grass in outer space.

Fabio Orsi plots a course for the solar wheel of everything on his opening piece "Evening by Evening", as majestic layers of guitar drone and keyboard alchemy fill the infinite vacuum of perpetual midnight. Orsi is based in Berlin these days, but it sounds like he is somewhere between Atlantis and Virgo. Stretching out like a galaxy in a hammock, this track puts the listener somewhere "faraway" to yearn affectionately for something to touch. It all sounds too big to comprehend, ebbing and flowing with a slender grace that maintains your existence as a miniscule yet buoyant speck in the goulash of natural order. Orsi sure likes to bliss out, constantly shifting attention and spectrums ever so subtly. Before you know it, a duck flies by. What? Are we on Earth again? Perhaps somewhere in the clouds, slowly descending toward something more familiar. Yes, yes, I hear children playing. Thank you gravity!

Birds begin to sing, and the tides of "near" begin to draw close. The collaborative title track sounds much like a rushing river of fog, Orsi's cosmic sigh being softly plucked by Seaworthy's distant and hopeful guitar. Dreamy to be sure, though I favor the solo tracks simply for their more distinctive voices. It is lovely to hear these two artists blend together so seamlessly with the birds singing throughout, but the album is blessed by the fact that they didn't end with this one.

While Orsi works with a grand, twilit luster, Seaworthy tends toward the microcosmic. For the final piece "Branch and Stone", Webb plays very close to the inner ear, utilizing a couple of other musician friends Sam Shinazzi and Greg Bird. Fitting is the name Seaworthy, as the minimal use of bowed instruments and haunted ribbons of drone invoke a stranded soul drifting out to sea. You can almost picture the doomed raft on the horizon, the hunger pangs beginning to feel ecstatic, a lifetime coalescing with the knowledge of its steady demise. Ridiculously personal and gorgeous, this track is the real keeper. I haven't heard Seaworthy before, but his last album, 1897, inspired one reviewer to write a poem, and I'd venture anything Cameron Webb writes henceforth is worth investigating. The space he can create within his careful and relaxed tinkering is quite breathtaking.

With each track clocking in at over fifteen minutes, there is plenty of space to settle into. If you're not in dream-drone heaven then you probably are of the darker drone persuasion. This release really hits the spot and is a sleeper hit for ambient record of the year. Definitely recommended for fans of Stars of the Lid, Hammock, and all things wide open and sweet.

-Nayt Keane