Crommie, Daniel: Portal

Daniel Crommie is an American multi-instrumentalist hailing from Portland, Oregon. He has been around these pages for years now so you may have come across a review from time to time.

With his new disc Portal Crommie continues his ambient exploration of electronic music mixed with natural timbres. Crommie adds his usual instrumental prowess playing a variety of instruments and soundscapes including keyboards, flutes, rhythm sequences, samples and atmospherics. What you get are four tracks clocking in around fifty-three minutes. These are all long form compositions with Crommie experimenting with his patented electronic soundscapes.

The first track "Waking Morpheus" is a calming pastoral infused soundscape of electronics and flute. The mixture of electronics and acoustic sounds is really quite intriguing. On the title track more electronic blips and bleeps surround swells of keyboards before a keyboard sequence unfurls having an almost Alan Parson's vibe. This track gets pretty moody and dark, almost nightmarish in scope. The pastoral keyboard sequences and swells in "Dark Energy" are perhaps a bit too long in the tooth for my liking at over twenty-one minutes but it is still a well done piece of brooding electronic music. The intense explosions of sound near song's end are pretty cool. The disc ends with the sweeping electronics of "The Day After", very cinematic in nature.

Portal is another strong effort from Crommie. While it will not appeal to everyone chances are if you enjoy Crommie's past works you will dig this as well.

Track Listing:
1. Waking Morpheus (9:10)
2. Portal (12:13)
3. Dark Energy (21:30)
4. The Day After (10:38)

Added: August 31st 2017
Reviewer: Jon Neudorf
Score:
Related Link: Artist's Bandcamp Page
Hits: 1306
Language: english

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