[reviews] afe097lcd
mathieu ruhlmann: the earth grows in each of us

"The Earth Grows In Each of Us" has a feeling of rural decline and death, of past life's effects found in abounded buildings taken over by nature and time. Feeling like a more shifting and active version of William Basinski work - with loops of stuck and decaying strings and piano melancholy - and tired ambient unfolds that are weaved with ominous bell tones, muffled voices, aged textures and distant field-recordings.

This is music of yellowed dust covered photographs smiles still just showing, decaying spiderweb thickened hallways that lead to creaking unsafe staircases, windows that stare out vacantly to once children filled gardens that are now tangled with overgrowth. Ruhlmann has managed to capture very well the feeling of aged, worn out and forgotten places.

Where Basinski often stretches and ages his material over a longer time Ruhlmann mostly sticks to around ten minute mark for each of five tracks here with only the last track carving out 30 minutes run time. And really the shorter tracks are where he performs most convincingly and effectively, the longer last track just seems to run out of stream and atmosphere at about the half way point leaving the track rather treading mediocre waters, which rather lets down the end of the album.

Ruhlmann certainly mangers to build some very tangible and sonically descriptive aged atmosphere with "The Earth Grows In Each of Us", only really falling down when he attempts to stretch his work out into longer pieces.

[Roger Batty]