About the review

Title: Don't Bring Light into This Place
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Artist: Mooma
Genre: Electronica: Ambient
Reviewed by: Spectra on October 24, 2007 (All reviews by Spectra)

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1Overall Description
A very, very sublime and "subconscious" track that, rather than having actual obvious melodies, has instruments arranged to meld and pop-up various parts of the string texture IE "ghost melodies"...a completely new and brilliant technique. Falls very close to an agent toward meditation with it's consistently repeating 3-chord main theme, the song's equivalent of a chant, but also seems to fail musically and to keep attention on a non-chant-like musical level because of this, at least in my own mind.
 
2Creativity Description
The main string melody does shift very progressively...for example the parts at 2:00, 2:54, and 4:44 have similar on the
surface...although different, chords...and if you listen to the piece without "looking carefully" you'll think its a 3 chord
song when, in fact, the progression is much closer to 12-chord jazz. Put that together with the "Ghost melodies" mentioned
before and you have a site to behold. The real hitch to this song is that the main 3 chord theme seems to proliferate over the song and takes away from all the evolutionary touches and "ghost melodies"...likely making it seem very redundant to all but hardcore ambient fans.
 
3Artistic License Description
There is no doubt in my mind that combining the mentality of meditation and chant with electronic music has never been done before...so even though it doesn't quite hold my attention it undoubtedly deserves to be held in high regards for this feat.
 
4Arrangement Description
The arrangement here is strongly suited to a trance-y ambient meditative feel and it seems the repeating theme is an attempt to, as meditation does, distract ones mind and worries away as one focuses on the melody (the song's equivalent to a
"monk's chant"). As noted in the creativity section though, aside from actually being used in meditation, the use of a
repeating simple melody in such a fashion seems a bit headache-ish in redundancy in a musical sense.
 
5Sound Quality Description
Not only does it sound professional, it seems to be near miraculous this artist found/tuned the pads and instruments such that they shift through each other so cleanly. Of the thousands of musician in trance, ambient, and other trancey genres many try for the "ghosted melody" sound, but Mooma seems to do it better than anyone I've heard so far.
 
6Does it work as a piece of music Description
While it's very musical it fails partly in my mind by failing to hold attention do to the very same chanting nature that, on the flip-side, makes it terrifically original. So whether it works for you as music can shift either way. What I can say to the artist though is, by making slight slow evolutionary changes in those main three chords just as you have done with the background, you can hopefully keep that "chant-iness" and yet make the tune sound more progressive and reachable to the average listener.
 
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