- After releasing his debut album Binary Scenes in 2009, San Francisco ambient artist Atomic Skunk, aka Rich Brodsky, seemed to have a lot to offer. Portal followed thirteen months later, and Alchemy another thirteen months after that. Then... nothing.
So you can imagine my surprise and excitement when earlier this year he blew the dust off the mailing list and announced a new album: Base Camp.
Base Camp follows the proven Atomic Skunk formula without missing a beat: beautiful Michal Karcz artwork, a musical journey designed to be listened to gaplessly, although this time around there is a version with gaps if you want them. It looks like it could be the album we were waiting for in 2012, but how does it sound?
Well, pretty much the same. From the first notes of the opening and title track you could have thought you had put on an older album by mistake. The sound effects that set the scene for our journey don’t appear to have changed during the eight year break, which is a little bit disappointing. This is most conspicuous with the rising cymbal effect that makes a return for the fourth consecutive album.
What Base Camp does do differently to the albums from the start of the decade is demonstrate that it is more clearly a space journey. Not that this is unfamiliar territory, I refer you to Frozen Neptune from 2009, Once More Around Ganymede from 2010 and of course the twenty-four minute long ode to the night sky from 2011 in Temple Of Stars. However, this time around though it feels like we’re going through space and taking life with us, rather than passing through the cosmos in a montage of other scenes. There is a strong comparison to be made to The Path by Carbon Based Lifeforms from back when they were still releasing under the moniker Notch. It may be worth noting then that Carbon Based Lifeforms are again listed in the liner notes as an influence, just as they were for Portal.
There is enough evolution here to make Base Camp well worth getting if you’ve already got some Atomic Skunk sitting in your record collection, and it’s just as good an introduction if you don’t. After eight years though, there’s just not quite enough evolution to really excite. If electronic ambient music is what you’re after then you could do a lot worse than this new offering from Atomic Skunk, but then if that’s your mood you could equally grab an older album from Atomic Skunk and do just as well.
- Sam Gunders.