If one can accept the unabashed use of grainy, cheap synthesizer pads as the music's primary voice, the towering rivers of harmony Lea constructs from them are easy enough to digest.  The simplicity of timbre on this recording rhymes perfectly with the divine simplicity of its purpose and composition.  Familiar, yet still intensely emotional shifts between minor and major versions of the same chord express a basic and intense yearning.  Titles such as "We Await Ourselves Within the Vision" speak to a universal and ongoing struggle for transcendence of the mundane and its cyclical struggles.  Zen is the ultimate goal, but there is still intense melancholy here, and the palpable danger of losing sight of the way long before the journey to enlightenment is over.

At their best, as in the tragic "Elixir Vitae", the chords have the somber, imposing presence and fullness of a harmonium.  The way the sounds reverberate is cosmic, larger than life, and throbs with a rhythmic iridescence.  Other times, it's more like a drunken, solitary after hours jam on the Casio, though certainly an intensely sincere one.  These contrasting impressions blend surprisingly well as the album plays through: the fusion of lo-fi electronics with monastic, meditative focus is never awkward, and lends valuable insight about the process of attaining inner patience and peace in our technology driven modern world.

 "The New Death", a rumbling 3 minutes of distant subterrean activity akin to the work of Thomas Koner or Ulv, is the first break from the shimmering stream of tonality.  The haunting "Mytochondrial Eve" is the other noticeable change of pace, an anticipatory muffled sound like the dreaming mind's delirious gradual astral penetration of oneiric fog.  If you've ever enjoyed the static, somnient long form works of Jim O'Rourke, Steve Roach or Robert Rich, this track is for you.

 All in all, Lea Cummings has made a valiant effort to create something timeless, reverent and wise out of the sounds of the oft-dismissed cheap digital synthesizer.  It doesn't quite match the subtlety of tone, masterful progression or vertigo-inducing foreignness of Noma's very similar "Mara", but it's a beautiful, emotional and listenable recording.  I look forward to delving into the earlier volumes of the series.