Stephen Philips: Natural Environments Stephen Philips: Natural Environments (Dark Duck Records - 2000) Instead of the gun-toting, khaki-clad adventurer stalking through the jungle to bring untamed animals back alive for the zoo, picture Stephen Philips as an intrepid audio-explorer, braving the wilds of Washington DC to capture the sounds of Natural Environments, then caging them within ambient electronic walls of his own design.... However you prefer to conceptualize them, 10 slices of electronics plus atmospherics add up to 69 minutes of surround-sound earspaces. Not only do we hear many of the "standard" nature sounds, we also get a couple of bits which are more pertinent to the nation's capitol, such as the health-care issues of opening track, Breath. Faint guitar notes wander (though never very far up or down the scale) as murky, medically-slanted conversations and television reports flow in the distance. Splishy aquatic sounds dapple Sun Splash (10:36) as ephemeral organ-like tendrils slowly writhe and thrum. Warm-though-thin synth rays stretch throughout Daytime, luxuriating amongst occasional bird chirps and a rising/falling breeze. A billowing cascade of synthtones descends upon the rougher textures of Rumble; the underlying ... Self-explanatory Thunder (3:11) and rain are enlaced by twisting spirals of dark soundstreams; delightfully ominous! Higher warles radiate through another relatively short piece, Incandescence whose "environmental" source I'm unsure of, other than sporadic insect/avian sounds. Humanistic Prattle interweaves (often indecipherably streamed) human voices with a glowering electronic cloud from which the odd sci-fi eruption is emitted. An audible mention of insurance and distant mediaspeak again places a socio-politoco-healthcare spin on the proceedings. Buzzy waves of Enveloping Darkness ripple in ever-expanding arcs, with a muted undercurrent of TV news speech and a diffused mechanical aura. Cricketsong and reverberating guitar strands fills the air of Dusk to Nightfall, but are intruded upon by street and pedestrian traffic,rather like noisy neighbors ruining an otherwise peaceful listening experience... ...and bringing an end to this exploratory 8.4 trek through Natural Environments as captured by Stephen Philips. A sonic mixture of nature and humanity backed by various ambient moods and modes Philips has been busy at Dark Duck, also recently releasing Deep Chill Network's Dreams 3, as well as interviewing with us. This review posted November 29, 2000 AmbiEntrance © 2000-1997 by David J Opdyke (except CD cover art, rights retained by original owners).