She Loves To See The Sky
From the onset of this choice release, British drone-centrist Ian Holloway engages in a long-staring contest upon the horizon. Through his undulating sustained tones that gradually contort and shift in timbre and clarity, Holloway sets his attention on sun-flecked hazes upon faraway vistas, watery mirages, and sunblind hallucinations. These tones are more on par with the best work from the Ora / Monos axis, which is not surprising considering that Holloway has worked with Darren Tate on a number of occasions in the past. But not before long, he plunges this piece deep into the center of the earth, with cavernous reverberations of actionist gestures that have some of the acoustic doom properties that we have come to expect from Svarte Greiner and Xela. The sinewy tones give way to these heavy clanks and jarring noises swaddled in the long-decay reverb of what we could imagine to be a subterranean sewer, or perhaps a massive cave chamber, or some abandoned industrial warehouse. As Holloway puts aside his bricks and chunks of metal, the earlier gilded tones make their reprise amidst a distant set of bird songs and softly struck hand bells. One of the better pieces to emerge from Holloway's own Quiet World imprint, and this one is limited to just 80 copies. - Jim Haynes, Aquarius Records
Holloway is especially keen on keyboard-generated drones, and this 40-minute offering is no exception. Again, nothing to cry miracle at but a pleasing listen without particular troubles. The large part of the work’s weight lies on the broad shoulders of classically throbbing subsonic lows, most often deriving from clustered layers in the low regions of the instruments, whatever they are. Particularly in the first half, percussive presences – of the post-industrial kind – thud and reverberate in the mix to add a degree of instability, but then the moaning river stays in its bed more or less till the end of the album, probably for the better. A honest effort which is not difficult to mentally connect with, provided that we remain aware of this music’s pre-determined field of action and well-known boundaries. A steady company from a peddler of sincere-sounding electronic music who privileges solidity and openness to incomprehensible sentence-spitting hiding sonic fraudulence. - Massimo Ricci, Temporary Fault
If you go walking out into the green spaces around cities – at least close to where I live – you’ll stumble upon many places like this record. Abandoned industrial buildings, their doors blown open, rusting away; the structures seem to be held in one piece only by the bolted-on signs warning of unsafe walkways and hidden asbestos. You walk in – the air inside is cooler, just a few cracks of sunlight show where the roof doesn’t quite meet the walls. Every footstep echoes around the space, simple movements have serious aural consequences. There’s nothing and nobody here, but it’s hard to convince yourself of that.
I don’t know if this is the sort of environment that Holloway had in mind when he put the sounds on She Loves to See the Sky together. Given the title and cover art, I don’t suppose it was. But probably everybody who hears this will have a different reaction to it, responding to it like a musical Rorschach test. The noises are simple enough to allow that: gently pulsating drones, rattling, clanging sounds, bird song (slightly slowed down, I think, giving it an other-worldly quality), a far-off piano being dismantled, the faintly-perceived noises of distant life (distant in time or space?). Nothing happens quickly, everything is given lots of room, yet somehow this collection of unforced sounds feels oddly oppressive (not unpleasantly so). At the end, a repeated five-note figure softly rings out; it’s the sort of thing you might find on a post-rock record, but it doesn’t build, or try to mean anything. Like the rest of the record, all it’s really doing is existing. (stilton)
The drone meister returns. Before working under his own flag, Ian Holloway was Psychic Space Invasion and had a label called Elvis Coffee Records, but under his own name and as Quiet World being a more 'serious' label he started a second career. In this new work drones and field recordings play the main role. Below the surface there is a deep rumble, of what could be synthesizers (analogue or digital? The cover doesn't tell us) or processed feedback. On top there are field recordings. What kind? Again its not easy to tell. Maybe an example of sticking a microphone out of the window? Or perhaps something more elaborate - a large empty space with some obscured action (birds flying about?). A rawer version of say Paul Bradley. Less refined than his previous release, this is a some what more heavy work of drone sounds. The differences are in the detail. A fine work as such however, expanding his horizon. - FdW, Vital Weekly
