By treating what is essentially a series of sacred music recordings with various techniques designed to degrade those sounds, Craig has delivered an album of church music for an amoral world; spirituals for a broken planet. Awe-inspiring and unforgettable.
Easily one of the densest—though also one of the finest—works of his career.
Thresholder is a triumph of meticulously detailed composition and, at the same time, a masterpiece that seems to evolve, albeit in an unnaturally sepulchral soundworld of fragmentation, from the simplest of sources into a life-affirming wholeness.
This compendium of odds and ends from the Canadian singer and sound artist may be his most incisive and convincing album yet, thanks to the way his voice finally becomes one with his machines.
While it could be viewed as a clearinghouse of outtakes as Craig works diligently on his next major album, the tracks are sequenced so that they form a coherent whole.
Edit: this album is criminally underrated imo check it out PLEASE!! I still listen to it regularly.
Emotional, captivating, textured ambient that I cannot stop listening to. Every song adds to the experience, every moment feels essential. This is for me a personal favorite ambient album of the decade and definitely my favorite ambient album of the year.
Ian William Craig constructs an operatic sound building his voice inside the mechanical vibrations. This is contemporary art. The soundtrack of a man-made outer space.
#85 | / | The Quietus |