More About This CD

'Jason Corder, recording as off the sky, has released an album that expertly blends the warm textural melodicism of flowing ambient music with the beats, clicks, pops, and effects from the glitch and laptop subgenres. The composite result is an album which brims with imaginative sophistication, a multi-hued affair that rewards the listener as layer after layer of smooth beauty intermixed with computer-controlled rhythms is revealed slowly and deliciously. The opening track, "adagio, à deux" is a perfect example of this amalgamation, as the opening churning organ refrain yields to gently pulsing synth drum beats amidst assorted gloops, gleeps, and clicks, eventually transforming into ethereal chorals (a la Ashera) and circular retro keyboards. The track is blissful as Corder does a magnificent job of sublimating the beats and effects to the degree that one is aware of their frenetic pulsing but not enough so as to disturb the smooth waves of melody and electronics. For the rest of the CD, the artist carves out eleven more of these sonic sculptures, always finding the balancing point between quirky noises/glitchy beats and smooth, if not even lush, washes, tones, and snippets of melody, sometimes played on what sound like synths from the late '60s and other times ultra-contemporary in fashion. "down the stream" has a lazy relaxed tempo to the glitch beats and a sunny day feel to its shimmering bell tones and echoing guitar-ish refrain. "channel movement" opens in quasi-experimental territory with amorphous ambient textures and clicking noises, but soon wanders over more accessible waters with nicely percolating beats (resembling Todd Fletcher's work, circa his psychetropic recordings) under a subtle minimal melodic refrain laced with hints of melancholy and a touch of darkness. The track manages to be both whimsical (owing to some cool '50s SF noises) and also foreboding at the same time. "low tide" might strike you (it did me) as a mixture of glitch ambient and Richard Bone-like "retro cool" synth tones, sliding over into a slinky sensuality during its five minute duration.



Admittedly, those who have an aversion to clicks, pops, scratching effects and similar aspects of laptop music should be forewarned since a few tracks have only scant melodic elements and contain a plethora of the former structures instead, such as "ahurani" which floats a barely there wavery drone under a breathy female inhalation/exhalation (kinda sexy to me) and a cavalcade of non-melodic components (still, to my ears, the track is quite accessible). On the other hand, how any fan of ambient music can resist the allure of the jewel-like glimmerings of "lite training" or the smoothly flowing near-cinematic synth string washes and echoed tones of "floating point" is beyond my comprehension. For me, I consider gently down the stream one of the best albums of 2005 and one of the best in the glitch/laptop subgenre since the turn of the century.'

'Tender as a hypersensitive turntable needle scratching whale-song at dusk, Off the Sky sharpens the edges of low fidelity; a shy waltz between brittle circuitry and the dynamic of natural substances. Jason melds loose elements - both natural and artificial - of minimal ambience and acoustic sensibilities with an uncanny sense of composition. Melodically, therein lies a gentle relationship of shuddering respirator breath-like patterns

leaning against blurry walls of sonic swell. Seemingly written as love letters from a ghost in the shell, his music beckons a quiet admiration under a pale moon-lit cityscape from afar...'