Rey 'Hidden Vibrations'

One thing about this site is that we certainly get a wide variety of music sent to us for review. This month I have reviewed jazz-rock, folk-rock and now we have trippy ambient stuff courtesy of Rey.

I have had this CD for some time and have to say that I find it quite difficult to write about. Normally there are things you can say about the composition, playing and singing whereas here we have a collection of 10 ambient synthi noodlings with very few 'hooks' to hang on to.

I am not an expert on this type of music but this sounds to me as if it is in the later Tangerine Dream mode with perhaps a little of The Orb about it. It's about textures, space, hypnotic rhythms and nice little sequences that you can float away on. Really nice to chill out to.

In it's field I would say that this is really rather good although it doesn't grab me in quite the same way as the first Irresistable Force album which sounded like the night time soundtrack to the English festival scene of the late 70's and very early 80's.

I have just couple of reservations, in a couple of places the sounds used are a little home keyboard ish (unfortunately some of the first sounds you hear on the album) and the chord sequence that kicks in on track 6 makes me think that they really should stick to the modal stuff.

Other than that I would say that if you like spacey, ambient synth music then this one is definitely for you. It's playing now and I have to say I suddenly feel nicely relaxed. A good one.

All tracks written, produced and engineered by Ulrik Rey Henningsen.

www.rey.dk

David Weston January 2001