ALEPH ZERO RECORDS Compilation Dark Room Beats 2010 1. Outsider Looking In ALTAIR 2. Tetraphobia PHASEPHOUR 3. Cajita De Sorpresas OVNIMOON 4. Boxing KRUSSELDORF 5. Rebooting Daisy OMNIMOTION & I AWAKE 6. Yangchin Jazz HIBERNATION 7. Dark GOOD RESTER 8. One Point One ALEXANDER DAF* 9. Tee-Child ALIGNING MINDS 10. Moth Wings ROBERT RICH 11. Owl VATAFF PROJECT 12. One Step Closer SHULMAN 13. When The Roof Is Low, Open Your Heart And The Sky Will Follow MINILOGUE FEAT. INID IMMAN

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After three years of work Aleph Zero invites you to an extraordinary meeting in a DARK ROOM, which they have designed for us. Paradoxically, within it you will find yourself without leaving your own private room. Don’t you believe me? Some sound masters such as: Shulman, I Awake, Omnimotion or Ovnimoon made a space conducive to relaxation and contemplation, took care of every detail to move you into a world of sophisticated textures based on a variety of electronic sounds. I assure you that they have done this job and you will like this place. And now it is enough talking! Turn the music on, close your sweet eyes and move in a rabbit burrow together with Alice or to the beach bathed in the moonlight – whatever one likes!

Altair opens the disc by using a thick beat. OUTSIDER LOOKING IN has a deep, but also an atmospheric sound. Two completely different vocal inserts (a male, warm melorecitation and a little bit tribal women whine) are harbingers of what is happening in the album – a huge diversity of different compositions. For example, the track TETRAPHOBIA of PhasePhour opens by some high (bringing to mind the ‘singing’ of a dolphin) sounds, which are accompanied by ambient backgrounds sounding pathetic. Once I was promised that I will ‘mature’ to some tracks having no beat and I think that it is the thing that has just happened, because I really do not wait for its entrance. Fortunately, it appears slowly and only in the second half it leaves a lazy pace. Ovnimoon spoils me by IDM track CAJITA DE SORPRESAS. A surprising, broken composition full of twists and moods tends to multiple playback. Fortunately, thanks to its diversity it can not get boring. In the track called BOXING of Krusseldorf you can hear some rhythmically bursting foil bubbles, and languid melodies sound time cosmic, and once like from a circus (or even like a sort of pastiche). I Awake and Omnimotion have composed a track which is close to my ideal one. The warm, deep beat, sound-noises bringing to mind those which are accompanied by amateur recordings, a luscious vocal (in a tolerable amount, very tasty and easy to digest) and some noises that always remind me of the ocean. Hibernation with its YANGCHIN JAZZ gives to the dark room something that we did not have before – the acoustic sound. Thanks to some jam ‘interferences’ it makes you feel like during a concert in a smoky tavern. DARK is my favourite track in this album. A masterpiece made by Good Rester is dark, but lightened by the beautiful vocal. I can not even write about it, because every time I hear it, I want just to close my eyes and drift away. Many times during its continuance, I feel like it is coming to an end…, but luckily there comes sweet ‘more’! And when it does not come, though I have a finger for a multiple performing. In the darkness of the track called ONE POINT ONE of Alexander Daf, I feel much less secure. This is not a place for little girls, here for sure will take place some more bizarre rituals, and the eyes are better left open. I only add that it is a musical feast.
Those people who are susceptible to the hypnosis should skip TEE-CHILD (Aligning Minds). A mysterious, music box melody moves smoothly in broken IDM sound, not without the help of sounds like of a contrabass. Especially the second half of the track (which really at its duration changes several times, which is simply amazing!) allows me to melt myself and enjoys my blissful ears the most. Robert Rich adds some sounds straight from the computer games to this mixture of styles. In the track called MOTH WINGS sophistically these sounds were contrasted with sounds of the nature. Probably the heart grows for the lovers of computer games – a game in nature, this is it! Vataff Project also serves sounds close to nature – in the impenetrable darkness of the forest I can hear not the title owl but the croaking of frogs, a disturbing flutter of insect wings, kittenish singing of grasshopper and a whole bunch of polished sounds which are inflated to the power of electronic music. ONE STEP CLOSER of Shulman was mixed by DJ Shahar and Eitan Reiter. For me a real feast begins in the second half of the seventh minute. And when the muffled sounds of drums begin to vibrate alarmingly just to go into a musical melody stolen from a child’s music box in the ninth minute, I am already so high that I would prefer not to fall away from here. The ideal ending for the travel full of experiences into Aleph Zero’s DARK ROOM is the track with the most beautiful (and longest) title: WHEN THE ROOF IS LOW, OPEN YOUR HEART AND THE SKY WILL FOLLOW. If you had doubts where to classify this album, after hearing it you will already know that the categories ‘Timeless’, ‘Outstanding’ or ‘Moving’ will be perfect. This path is simply magical, as deep as the Mariana Trench and impenetrable as the cosmos.

I can still add only that this album is like a patchwork – each part of this wondrous composition is ideally suited to the whole, because it is a contrast. Another paradox, of which (as you had a chance to find out) the guys from Aleph Zero are masters.
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9 / 10
Beata Brzoza