Noma — Mara

Noma's "Mara" towers, majestically,  It represents that of the beyond which has the power to call me.  The drone musick of the spheres herein is heavenly pure.  This record proves again that the purest of energy always takes the most simplistic shape.  The structures of this album are transparent and perfect.  The warm, buzzing music bubbles with youthful immediacy and energy, glows with a strange alluring light that sometimes becomes deceptively friendly. 

It’s a refreshing change from the sound and presentation of ambient masters like Lustmord or Robert Rich (whom I do admittedly love).  No colorful, elaborate packaging containing poems about lofty existential subjects, no specific theme from nature (desert, arctic, rainforest) or dense, symphonic progressions of chords.  Only the drone, a sweet, full sound.  And a mysterious, simplistic diagram of the female body.

The first piece is similar to Nurse With Wound and his "Soliloquy for Lilith" release, a cornerstone of surreal, droning ambient.  The track eerily drifts through watery approximations of melody and subterranean hallucinatory caverns.  The second track is a reverberant flight of fancy; like floating on pure bliss.  Rather than intensify or surprise within its 18 minute duration, it gradually muffles and becomes all the more subdued, as if to carefully and intently lull the mind of the listener.  Yet this is not a lethargic sound, it is a calming one.  It's very pleasant and texturally wonderful.  The 37 minute final song is the obvious centre piece of the record.  Here John Cromar shows off his production skill with the thick, soul massaging bass that throbs rhythmically through most of the song.  The sounds that surround the droning bass range from reverberant reedy rattling and glitchy high frequency scratching to sublime synth washes, and sounds  similar to wind.  The song develops a multitude of spatial layers which move in and out of prominence, making for a very deep sound world.  The pulsation of the bass occasionally drops out, leave the listener to float in a luminescent depth.  The track ends with a powerful alternation of two crisp, high frequency chords. Sparkling synth tones like the feeling of cool water on the face,

"Mara" is a very listenable record despite its length and minimalism.  It is much more a piece of aesthetically pleasing sound than Noma's other record "Domesticism", which gets more points than "Mara"  for innovation but less for listening enjoyment.  Few ambient albums are this good.