aurora 2 review from textura.org While many ambient collections adopt a wallflower approach, the eleven immersive pieces on Merck's Aurora 2 exude a riveting grandeur that commands attention throughout its seventy-six minutes. Almost five years have passed since the initiating installment, so it doesn't surprise that an entirely different cast appears: familiar Merck names Deru, Blamstrain (Finland-based Juho Hietala), Twerk (Shawn Hatfield), and Cepia (Huntley Miller) plus new recruits Ginormous, Max Spransy, Shapeshifter (Malcolm Goodman), Sabi (Taro Peter Little), and Kettel (Netherlander Reimer Eising). The collection is bookended by the understated majesty of Deru's “Only the Circle” and Shapeshifter's “Tranquil Vapor” whose crepuscular waves of droning washes and ripples bring the album to a marvelous close. In between, shorter pieces like Cepia's “Ncoin Arrange,” all glitchy piano and electronic loops, and Twerk's vaporous dub meditation “From Brown to Green” rub shoulders with ten-minute epics; interestingly, dub receives another, more forceful workout in Sabi's smeary “Black Ink, Dancing in a Rainstorm.” Hewing to a more conventional ambient template are Max Spransy's lulling, acoustic guitar-laden “The Lights in the Sky are Stars,” Sabi's peaceful “Uki Reflection,” and Kettel's crystalline “Goodbye in September” which hazily unfurls like the resurrection of a long-forgotten memory. While all of the material impresses, three especially powerful pieces stand out: Ginormous's “To Reveal Interiors,” whose industrial shuffle grandly rises above cresting waves of tonal shimmer and stormy ripples; Blamstrain's cavernous drone excursion “Spring/Summer” which slowly intensifies over eleven hallucinatory minutes; and Kettel's “Times of Running Eyes Closing” which teems with beautiful streams of elegiac synth tones. What a shame that Merck is releasing a mere 1000 copies of Aurora 2, given that music of such splendour surely deserves to be heard by vast multitudes. -Ron Schepper aurora 2 review from igloomag.com Merck's latest compilation, Aurora 2, is an ambient journey that has been hard to listen to. Merck has recently announced they'll be closing up shop sometime in 2006 when they release their 50th CD and LP. Aurora 2 is the 36th release and is, in my mind, much too close to the end. A departure from their regular programming, the ambience of Aurora 2 is tinged with sadness, a slow fade to black that is heartbreaking to hear. While Ginormous' "To Reveal Interiors" peaks with a huge rush of sound, it comes with such delicacy and grace that it feels ephemeral, a burst of light that is already transparent by the time it reaches its peak. Sabi's "Uki Reflection" is an ocean of sound, both literal and metaphorical as the tones wash back and forth over a field recording from a beach. Though, it is the sound of children playing, giving an Arovane-esque touch to the track, which lends it a wistful air. Sabi's other contribution, "Black Ink, Dancing In A Rainstorm," is a gorgeous piece of wind and sticks and light percussion over a wave of watery ambience, a rolling rushing flood of sound which easily overwhelms the listener and transports you along hidden streams to secret pools and waterfalls. Max Spransy's "The Lights in the Sky Are Stars" opens with a dim reverberation and echoing piano notes, a plaintive melody that is clearly lost in the vastness of the sky. As a washing machine adds a percussive rhythm to the piece, a flamenco-inflected guitar lightly trips through a sequence of notes, wringing a sweet song of vanished love. Blamstrain's ten minute "Spring/Summer" is a slow burn, filled with echoing bells that grow more strident as the background material becomes darker and more menacing. This is the spring of dark storms, the change from gentle rain and bright sun to tornadoes and dry, pervasive heat. Twerk's "From Brown to Green" uses glitch dub as the basis for its lament and is filled with echoes so deep you can fall into them completely. Voices try to make themselves heard but are always cut off by the resonating clatter of an overbearing squirt of fragmented melody. Kettel offers two tracks that are environmentally rich, filled with synthesizer melodies that soar like pigeons being released while tiny mechanical engines make miniscule noises underneath; while Cepia's "Ncoin Arrange" feels like a flower folding in on itself, filled with melodies that curl back on themselves as metallic percussion hints at a rhythm but decays too quickly to have any shape. The Shapeshifters close out the hour with "Tranquil Vapor," a slumbering symphony of winds and tones and moving fluids that sends me into a trance-like state. The song ends the ambient journey with a lingering finality, a diminishing series of echoes that speak of an era drawing to a close. It's a fitting end to a record which opened with such an expansive anthem of enlightened acceptance (Deru's horizon-bending "Only The Circle," filled with a cascade of marimbas and a elegiac hiss of dusty static). I'm going to miss you Merck, and thanks for the introspective moment offered by Aurora 2. I'm glad this isn't the last record of the label; it works well here and now where we can grieve in private, quietly. There are fourteen more records to go. I hope they set all the decks on fire. -Mark Teppo

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