An Italian ambient label Glacial Movements releases a 50th record, Smooth Inertia, a work by Stefan Węgłowski, a Polish composer, producer and live performer.
This ambient recording company has been trying hard to bring us the glacial aesthetics. A fully electronic album combines a wide range of genres ranging from post-modern minimal music to ambient, lowercase and drone.
The opening track Deep Light opens the door to the cyclical game of shadows. The composition is based on repetitive structure combined with the vocal part of Anna Figurska, giving a listener an impression of standing alone on the Arctic train station at nighttime.
After the intro track, the composition Ray of Night continues our sonic adventure. A bright well-balanced multi-layered work gives an impression of an easy listen with no harsh elements. The minimalist distant piano parts create a feeling of being in a big room, breaking the stereotypes of too atmospheric sound in this category of music.
The fact that this album differs from all previous works by this composer, leads to a thought that Węgłowski is constantly looking for new directions to develop his sound.
The whispering of Anna Figurska in the 3rd composition Time Brings Relief is a clear representation of human eroticism combined with the overall nocturnal mood of the track. In this case the author concentrates on the mid-bass frequencies, creating a less breeding, but gentle sonic illustration. A 11 minute-long work doesn’t feel too extended which happens from time to time with tracks of a similar duration.
Frozen Memory is the last original track of the release which transfers the listener into the loneliness of the kaleidoscopic world of broken piano melodies in a quite slowed manner.
Thanks to good producing skills, Węgłowski brings a story behind each music work which forms a whole structured entity under the name Smooth Inertia.
Author: Jan Kruml, Ilya Kudrin