By Drew Wilson
This review covers the uptempo ambient track Temple City – Paranoid Delusions.
This particular track was released in 2005 for free. While this track is apparently sometimes labelled as trance, there’s nothing about this track that says that this is a trance track. It does, however, fit nicely with the ambient label in my opinion. I would probably add uptempo as that seems to fit better for me.
This track starts off rather quiet, but gradually builds up with some seemingly random samples that builds a nicely done soundscape that justifies the title. You have insinuations of government conspiracies and coverups. You have some suggestions of UFO sightings. There is even a creepy sample of someone accusing someone else of working for the FBI punctuated by both a reverberation and delay effect (echos).
There’s plenty of effects thrown in that adds to a sort of mystifying mood throughout. The 303 bassline effects combined with a number of basic synthesized sounds works incredibly well here as well. I think this is one of those tracks that proves that something that has very simple to produce effects can, in the end, sound great. The addition of the metal grandfather clock ticking, I thought, was an unexpected, yet creative addition to the track which really adds some dimension to this track.
You can really feel not only a very present emotion that is heard throughout the track, but there is also a sort of storyline that you can hear that is portrayed with very simple, yet effective speech samples. If you don’t want something that is too punchy, but something that has a bit of a beat to it (and you want something that has that edge of fear to it), this is a great track to listen to. A very well produced track.
Score
8.5/10
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85
