Cyscape: Alignment Cyscape: Alignment (Farfield - 2000) While some know him as Phil Riches, lovers of spacy ambiance will come to know him as Cyscape, the creator of softly droning otherworlds. Brimming with abstract soundvisions of a most celestial nature, Alignment is the latest offering from the UK's Farfield label. Dark beauty awaits in these eight mostly-beatless tracks. Soft drifting motions and faint rhythmics are detected in the amorphous ebb-and-flow of The Master Plan. The blips, buzzes and sweeps of smooth-sailing Alignment are beaten upon by tribalized drumsounds in the middle third of the track. Seemingly nearer and more active, nebulous Higher Senses (5:00) drones energetically, laced with bleeping accents and wafting ghoststrings, before slurring into quieter zones of reverberous remembrance. A dense mix of rising/falling shimmers and hypnotically rippling adornments, Reflections (10:04) swelters in cyclic movements, picking up a bassier pulse and bird-like chitters as it evolves before returning to its original state. Deepspace drones and higher sheens serpentine through Depth of Vision; lightly pattering beats pockmark the writhing layers in a relaxed tempo. Ephemerally thrumming energies swell from View, the nearly-10-minute closing track; wispy chimes pulsate through an electron fog. Seekers of new interstellar soundspaces will float effortlessly into these lovely dark regions as rendered by Cyscape... Alignment shimmers with gaseous sonics, gleaming-though-diffused synthstreams and a few instances of e-perucssion. An 8.6-rated personal floatation area. Farfield ships to most countries worldwide, specializing in the US. This review posted May 31, 2001 AmbiEntrance © 2001-1997 by David J Opdyke (except CD cover art, rights retained by original owners).