Igloo Magazine, March 10th 2015

Mark Lyken & Emma Dove: Mirror Lands (Time Released Sound)

In itself the music of Mirror Lands embraces the path of semi-classical home made ambient, microtonalism, aleatoric experiments and green field recordings. For fans of discreet and partly electronic music from the organic ambient hypnosis to modern minimalism.

Despite of being quite young with its four years of activities Time Released Sound now figures among the leading actors and prestigious names in the world of craft- based ambient and experimental music. The musical quality, stylistic belonging and the type of production admit comparisons with what we can grab at well noted labels such as Fluid Radio, Flaming Pines or Hibernate.

Mirror Lands is the latest edition published by the label and marks the occasion to celebrate its 55th release. The album is beautifully and originally designed, packaged, assorted by charming vintage prints around wild nature beauty, industrial culture and human being dialectics. This work is limited to one hundred of copies in Digipak format, with a special edition of 65 deluxe copies. The result of a collaborative effort between two sound-visual artists based in Scotland: Mark Lyken and Emma Dove. It is the score of their new film about Scotland’s highlands and wonders. Their personal cinematic expression is somewhere between narrative fiction documentaries and nature love filmic meditations.

Aesthetically and from the thematics, Mirror Lands slightly reminds me the work of Barry Hershey or Werner Herzog (notably his early films such as Fata Morgana), or even Phill Niblock (The movement of people working.) The photography is very expressive and beautifully evocative, reflective if not trance-like orientated, the structure is rather experimental or conceptual. In itself the music of Mirror Lands embraces the path of semi-classical home made ambient, microtonalism, aleatoric experiments and green field recordings. The poetical soundscapes are continuously associated to colorful cinematic tendencies. Sound maps collide with free-form acoustic dreaminess, strangely textured and processed lines. Detached and gentle piano notes subtly rise through this catalog of introspective cinematic reveries.

Recommended for fans of discreet and partly electronic music from the organic ambient hypnosis to modern minimalism.

By Phillipe Blache