3.5

Release data:

Dave Luxton – Portal
CD-R, Wayfarer Records, 2010

With this release, Mr Luxton brings us an ambient album with an overall lush and harmonic cosmic music, this time taking a more cinematic approach.

Drawing from his experience as a film composer, he presents eight textural tracks of spacious music that really takes you “out there”. Its impact makes the listener enter mysterious and aural spheres built out smooth layered strings and drone pads along intentionally minimal, effective melodic lines.

Compared to his previous releases, the 50-minute “Portal” sounds much more accessible and (with the exception of “Cellar Door”) not to alienating. At the tail of the album, the beautiful “Coriolis” introduces a gracious and welcome flow of warm soundscapes, and this atmosphere carries on on the closing track “To the Titanic”.

Overall, the recording vaporizes a certain relaxed but not too chilled air, as there still are darker shades and always a certain amount of tension sensible underneath his sonic textures.
It would be interesting to find out how “Portal’s” mystifying music would work out when played in a planetarium with some slow whirling cosmic scenery as a backdrop.

Website: www.daveluxton.com

You can see what reviews I have done of this artist on the Dave Luxton artist page