The journey into enjoying ambient music can often be a tedious experience. Far from what most of the world would call "conventional", the genre is essentially based around traits that many other artists would consider career suicide. Despite this, ambient is thriving; from the underground to its mainstream, it continues to be a consistently great genre, rife with artists of bountiful talent and a diversity that almost goes unmatched. Specializing in guitar based ambient drone, Ontario, Canada native Damian Valles third record,
Bow Echoes is a meticulously constructed epic nearing total perfection. Although only six tracks long, the album is a sprawling forty minutes, that while is mostly centered upon the guitar based ambient approach Valles has become known for, doesn't exactly shy away from the genres aforementioned diversity. From hypnotizing guitar swells and pockets of clean picked guitar ("Wake Pattern") to breath-taking orchestral sweeps ("Derechos") it seems that
Bow Echoes welcomely diverges into experimentation with many different sections of ambient music.
Although the shorter tracks such as the percussion heavy "A Bow Echo" and the noise influenced "Debris" maintain a similar sound throughout their length, the two longest tracks on the album ("Ground Truth" and "Ridge and Furrow") prove to be much more complex affairs. "Ground Truth" begins as minimalistic as ambient can get, featuring only the soft hum of static. As it progresses, added layers of strange guitar effects become increasingly apparent, such echoed harmonized clean guitar, natural harmonics and a melodic distorted lead. "Ride and Furrow" on the other hand discards any use of the guitar and opts to focus upon atmospheric keys, offset by rare pulses of percussion and the distant playing of the piano. The density of
Bow Echoes is never ending; only repeated listens will draw the full potential from this dense, monolith of an album. However, considering
Bow Echoes is of such high quality, the choice to do so is a very easy one to make.
