It is generally quite difficult to review ambient/minimalist music because there is very little musical material to work with. There is little melody, not much harmonic play between instruments, and the songs are very long and unvarying. So to review an ambient album is to basically pay attention to your emotional experiences and reactions to the album and then express these in an objective manner to inform the reader. Here is my emotional experience.

It was Wednesday, October 17, 2007 and I missed the bus to work. This was no big deal because I like walking and this was a good walking day. It had been raining for two days and this day was another addition to the day count. It wasn’t raining hard, but it was raining enough. I just received GP~00 and felt like this was a good chance to get some good listening in, so I threw on my headphones and headed out the door.

I new nothing of GP~00 before my first listening, but the name made me guess it was going to be ambient in nature, or at least experimental. I was right. The first track is slow and sparse and somehow melodic. It lopes along repeating, but there are layers that get thrown in that add what can only be described as flair. The simplicity of the track makes these little bits of flair seem like epic apexes to a good old Mogwai song, or any others off the list. Granted it’s not as emotionally charged, but the effect of taking the listener to a different element is still there.

I prepared for the elements for my walk and was feeling quite comfortable with the weather, and the music was proving to be an excellent accompaniment. The next song featured a guitar, which was a surprise to me. Yes, it was ambient guitar, but it was still guitar taking the lead. I liked this. The guitar added warmth to what I was listening to. It felt as if my ears were taken out of the rain and placed in a warm room with some tea; the change was very welcome. As I continued to walk and other songs passed into my mind, I felt at peace. I felt like I could walk forever with this music adding the soundtrack to my landscape. The guitar came and went, industrial sounds made the mood harsher, and their textures ebbed and flowed. There is a bit of irony that I noticed as I walked in the rain, “Fall” features a sample of rain fall, which was now getting heavier around me. It took me a moment to realize that the prominent rainfall was coming from my headphones and not the street. And, interestingly enough, all of the track names have something to do with traveling, or changing space. It was all just a little too fitting, nudge nudge, wink wink.

The melody that was mentioned previously is something that prevailed through this overall ambient album. Most ambient folks tend to eschew melody and laugh off such a thing as structure or even harmonic motion for those hard core fellows, but GP~00 takes melody and ambience and puts them together in a nice little bundle. This is one thing that made the walk so pleasant. In between strictly textural and ambient songs, there were songs that featured more melody and something more to draw me in. The combo is certainly effective and enticing to the listener, and I got to work in what felt like 5 minutes rather than the 30 minutes it actually took me. I walked in the door, didn’t say hi to anyone, and went straight to my desk. I still had 10-15 minutes left and I didn’t want to ruin the mood. This is the emotional experience I had; I wanted to see the end of the line and to explore the tracks deeper to find what was on the other side.

The one gripe I must add is that I find it poor form to not end a song properly. Almost every track on this album just ends. There is little resolution to the songs; they go, then they stop. I’m sure this was a stylistic choice, but I find it to be a cop out in terms of song writing. A fade out would be better than nothing, but a well constructed finish to what is being said is very important in not only setting the stage for following tracks, but also letting the listener move more easily within the album, especially as the listener is being asked to absorb every layer of the music that is presented to him.

This aesthetic issue aside, this is a very interesting ambient album that takes a more melodic approach to ambience and certainly offers a perfect rainy day walk soundtrack. I’d also like to add that GP~00 gets the “best use of symbols in a band name” award. I've never seen a tilda in a band name before, good work.

-Greg Norte