Illusion of Safety, Life Garden, Voice of Eye: The Nature of Sand Illusion of Safety, Life Garden, Voice of Eye: The Nature of Sand (Manifold - 2000) The recordings of The Nature of Sand were gathering dust for five years, but have been unearthed to finally reveal the idiosyncratic explorations which occurred when Illusion of Safety performed live sonic improvisations with members of Life Garden, and then with Voice of Eye back in April of 1995. The murky drones and faint surround-sound happenings of Track One (40:49) receive a steadily pattering, almost mechanical, rhythmic backing of tribalistic form. Audio-phantasms come and go, the ghosts of unidentifiable sources... radiowaves, miles-away trains, unintelligible whispers and streaming winds may, or may not, inhabit the slowly evolving soundscape. A growing chaos of clatters drops out suddenly, the silence being filled by lightly bellowing horns, churning strings, and hissing bells. Quieter passages thrum like storm-laden soundclouds waiting to unleash onto the continually expanding tableau of aural oddness. Bonnie McNairn and Jim Wilson contribute some of Voice of Eye's undeniably surreal soundshaping skills to Track Two (36:06); electronic bleeps and hums are laced with flutey squeals and droning energies which hover in extended sky-reaching formations. Atmospheric disturbances billow as air currents shift in powerful maneuvers which are reminiscent of distant locomotive clamor, then of gaseous orchestral/spectral movements. A continual flood of sonic liquidity varies in density, strength and direction, but always flows onward... slowing, then eddying toward the final minutes, when faint intrusions and buzzing bass drones descend ominously upon the scene. These apparitions then cyclone into a rapidly streaming column of hissing destruction, which recedes to reveal muffled crowd chatter... For almost 77 minutes, The Nature of Sand slips grain-by-grain through a sonic desert alive with unknowable presences. Renowned experimentalists from Illusion of Safety, Life Garden and Voice of Eye stake their claim in this vast, isolationist space which sounds just as strange today as it did five years ago... material this bizarre couldn't sound dated. An 8.5 journey into hypnogogic states, unnatural dreamworlds and inventive noise. Click on over the the Manifold Records website to learn more... This review posted September 30, 2000 AmbiEntrance © 2000-1997 by David J Opdyke (except CD cover art, rights retained by original owners).