Transitions
Thus Ian Holloway, aka Psychic Space Invasion: "I want people to lose the boundaries between the sounds on the record and the sounds in the real world". End of the review (wait a minute, just kidding). A question arises: where did this man listen to "real world" manifestations even vaguely analogous to the ones comprised by this casing? I'd love living in that district. The piece starts with a farfetched slow swelling, a bottomless hum that, little by little, collects the vestiges of our resolve and scatters them all over the place, getting us ready for a tantalizing experience. As the time runs unstoppable, the timbral formation becomes beefy and, at the same time, confusing as assorted misshapen sources are observed at once in the stereo field: not a decipherable one in sight, except perhaps for a chronic "something" that resembles a disembowelled rhythmic chant by a Gregorian choir pulverized by atomic radiations. This lasts quite a while, until the music is completely established and the body has at long last adapted. Now we could go on and on, comfortably and optimistically thrilled; instead the whole ends, 41 minutes flown away like a nightingale. A brilliantly conceived CD needing perseverance, efficient in its scarcity of transitional phases. Might teach a couple of things to many operators in the congested sector of transcendence, a definition that in this particular case implies the existence of a gist, not only gormless words. - Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes
Ian Holloway, the man behind Psychic Space Invasion, started the Elvis Coffee Records label, then Quiet World, and now is perhaps behind Persepolis Records. It may seem confusing, all this label work, but ’Transitions’, the new release by his own Psychic Space Invasion, is on a ’real’ CD, as opposed to the previous releases, which were all on CDR. That is perhaps the only break, since the music is a continuation from what we know and heard before. At the bottom of the music there is a drone. That’s however in a constant movement, a flux, a flow. On top Holloway waves together sounds, clearly divided into various parts. There is a part with humming, chanting voices and towards the end there is a long passage with loops of piano playing. Loaded with effects this release, mainly in the area of delay and reverb, which gives the music a somewhat muddy character, whereas it could have been more open. That’s perhaps the only thing that is a bit less about this release, but otherwise I thought this release, while offering more of the same, is quite a nice release, and should appeal to those who love the Uk drone scene of Monos, Ora, Mirror, Andrew Chalk, Colin Potter and Paul Bradley. - FdW, Vital
Like listening to sounds from inside a shell or the wind in the trees, "Transitions" The latest album from Psychic Space Invasions is an epic 40 minute drone, that becomes part of the space it inhabits, the faraway bells and distant vocals merely shadows and spectres. Deeply introspective and filled with melancholy beauty, this album is easy to get lost in, everything ceasing as the final chords drift away. - Simon Lewis, Rumbles
One of the main characteristics of this UK-project is the very restricted number of copies from each release. The new album of Psychic Space Invasion has been limited to 200 copies, but in their wide and impressive discography, I even found some releases limited to 6 and 10 copies. This new release leads us (and be sure with such a restricted number of releases, we’ll be a few ones) throughout a long during soundscape from more than 41 minutes. A kind of crawling, dark atmosphere accompanies the lonely visitor into a mysterious ambient labyrinth. After some 18 minutes a kind of spooky chant emerges to the surface and sounds like a start for a much more diversified release. Ian Holloway aka Psychic Space Invasion composed a kind of ambient stuff for an imaginary movie. Some of the parts are quite efficient, but I’m missing a kind of constancy in the global production. Nothing special here! - ED, Sideline
With this epic drone piece, Ian Holloway bids a fitting farewell to the Psychic Space Invasion moniker.
Psychic Space Invasion is the alter ego of prolific ambient composer Ian Holloway, who now records under his own name. Featuring some of his most bleak and somber sonic ideas, Transitions makes for a suitable farewell to previous moniker, encapsulating both its playful spirit and its darker implications with a single drone composition that evolves gradually from cavernous dark ambient to horror film chanting to soothing piano motif, all in the span of 40 minutes or so. Beginning with deep extended drones, Transitions immediately establishes itself at the darker end of the ambient spectrum, a bit like early Lustmord without all of the ritualism, as softened and sustained gong-like washes fill out the sound, tones undulating a bit aimlessly but nonetheless deepening the eerie atmosphere. A two-note choral chant fades in to bring the album to its most explicitly dark places, recalling nothing so much as a quieter version of the scores from such '70s Satanic horror films as Rosemary's Baby and The Omen, but true to its title, this album does indeed make a distinct transition, shifting gradually but decisively from tension to calm, deep rhythmic hums that lull you to sleep like the rumble of a train (albeit without sounding particularly train-like). As the album nears its conclusion, the drones partially give way to recognizable instruments, here a buried snippet of piano lullaby, there a hint of something that sounds like woodwind, and a piece that started out in darkest depths ends as something quite different. Sure to appeal particularly to fans of Robert Rich and Vidna Obmana, Transitions is dark without being melodramatic and atmospheric without being boring. - Matthew Johnson, RE:GEN Magazine
This is already the umpteenth release by Ian Holloway, aka Psychic Space Invasion. On the surface, this 41-minute track of epic drones and minimal piano and singing is hardly original. But Holloway does it right: the atmospheres, the development, repetitive chants that do succeed in creating a ‘tribal’ feel, the sound that can be vaguely described as natural but ranks among the most desolate and isolationist I’ve heard in quite some time.
“Transitions” consists of different movements, each clearly distinguished from the others by means of instrumentation, volume, dramatics, urgency and – therefore – atmosphere. The beginning is barely audible and it’s taking some time for the echoing electronics to develop a three-dimensional presence that feels as if they were recorded in a sea cave. Dissonant industrial interventions are lacerating the sonic texture after some ten minutes, further unsettling the listener. A short retarding passage is to follow, only to prepare for my favourite part of the track: that repetitive chant that’s layered upon an uncanny tape loop, becoming ever more insistent and, at times, almost unbearable. From about the 30-minute mark a gentle piano joins in, offering fragments of melancholia while the chants slowly ebb away before they are replaced by a pattern of beats that is way down in the mix and sounds utterly forlorn. More layers, the piano again, and then the layers are breaking away, one after the other until only the piano remains and the track is ending almost as quietly as it has begun. None of this is utterly original, but it is, duh, immensely poetic. And highly recommended. 8/10 -- Jan-Arne Sohns, Foxy Digitalis
It's hard indeed to describe, or review, what would be termed 'dark ambient' in its purest form such as this. It ebbs, it ebbs some more, and doesn't really flow anywhere except at a glacial pace. It starts out inaudibly, takes nearly two minutes to be heard... But then, when you have forty-one minutes for the single track, why rush things?
Indeed, it takes over fifteen minutes for things to evolve (hell, that's the kind of time this track has to work with) into more than just calm drones. The drones begin to ripple like a breeze blowing across a lake, and wordless, vocal chanting finally provides some relief from a boredom that was rapidly setting in. And then, the darkness sets over it, somehow as the chants end, and other noises come in, it enters the realms of the pitch black, and really sounds rather unsettling.
The darkness doesn't last too long, though, and soon the chants return, before they are gradually faded out and replaced by a stately piano melody - just over half an hour in, and this is the first hint of anything resembling a tune. Which is frustrating, as this is by far the best part of what is, by this point, somewhere between trying my patience and simply vanishing into the background. And, indeed, before you know it, it's back where we started, with a minute of silence.
While this is elegantly put together, and stands well as a work of audio sculpture, it's difficult to say much more about it other than nod my head and admire it. But then, like all art - lest we forget that music is an artform in its purest sense - some will love it, some will hate it, and some will be left in the middle. I'm one of the latter, in this case. - Adam Williams [5/10], Connexion Bizarre
