Function — The Secret Miracle Fountain

The extensive list of personnel on The Secret Miracle Fountain holds but a few somewhat famous names: Lakshmi Shankar, Ryan Teague and Stuart Dempster. Main man Matt Nicholson has been working on this album all over the world you'll find the reflection of that modus operandi in the diversity in sound.

Built on contributions of said personnel as well as fieldrecordings which are all thrown into Matt's blender creating some sort of 'digi-acoustic' music. There's dreamy indiepop that, for me personally, is where it gets a bit dull, the vocal stylings in this genre come off as uninterested to me. Luckily there's also plenty of more dreamy, ambient parts that stroke me in a more pleasant way. There's also ritual-like drones as well as a semi-oriental piece called Mad Light Obviating Things that are quite enjoyable in a somewhat hippie/spiritual way, think the Osho-inspired material by Amorphous Androgynous/FSOL.

Although separated in many parts and titles the albums presents itself more like one lengthy trip taking a few turns left and right but never straying to far from the path of being 'dreamy'. As said before I do feel a few parts are somewhat bland but in total this is quite enjoyable, although that miracle fountain remains secret.