Sublunar by Kane Ikin

I first heard about Kane Ikin's Sublunar from a friend, a fellow admirer of the ambient genre, and the man behind music review site wajobu.com. After previewing a couple of tracks I came to think of Sublunar as ambience with grit.

Taken as a whole, the album brings with it a sense of place and a tangible quality almost like a found object. It asks "Where am I?" Paradoxically, the dictionary definitions of sublunar are both "within the moon's orbit" and "earthly." It's the grit of lunar dust and an echoing loneliness that I hear. But I also feel the earthy outdoors with waves of cold gray wind pulsing through the music.

There is a natural quality and a post-industrial quality to the music. Visually it brings to mind fragments of damaged black and white film footage, a solo walk through a vast, moonlit, grassy field, an abandoned factory looming nearby. The familiar and the strange. Is the music damaged? More likely it's the imperfections that make it beautiful.

When it's playing, I hardly acknowledge it. When it stops, it's like the air has been sucked out of the room.

More about Kane Ikin can be found at kaneikin.com.

I received no compensation of any kind for this review.