An untitled split c60, I started with Derek Rogers's side. Warm, flowing, pooling notes with lush textures that weave and build upon themselves, hypnotizing loops. Thick and syrupy like honey but with the buzz of sluggish bees still floating above. Psyched-out chords slipping all over one another on top of a bed of metallic-organic fuzz. Rich guitar reverberates at a slow-burn pace. There are lots of layers but each one is crisp enough that when they meld, the results are just hazy enough to produce a lucid dreaming effect, insinuating themselves slowly into tangible reality. Strong and a little rough, but with a crumbling fragility at times, that speaks highly and distinctly of Rogers. The music feels complete, missing nothing, sensuously perfect, structurally cohesive.

Now for the Slaughtering Dolphins side. The echoed sounds of crowds that produce their own measured music of sorts, a spacious but closed-off atmosphere like an indoor auditorium, with sudden warped light arpeggios skittering dreamily across the surface, sort of cosmic or fantastic, sinking and rising and swirling (around that same warm cushioning fuzz as Rogers's side) like so much space dust reflecting the colors of stars both dying and being born. Illusory and yet soberingly beautiful. Shifts into a more mournful, slightly foreboding and growing coarser with every second, becoming churning space feedback with only the faintest hint of its origins. An eerie high drone picks up, scrabbling and settling in your ear canals. Slaughtering Dolphins seem to be coaxing sounds from chimes and birds and motors all rubbing up against one another in strange harmony, catalyzing into mandala-like patterns. It's interesting to hear it go, and made me want to know where it was going to end up, although it did take a bit too long to get there. 9/10 -- April Larson (19 May, 2010)