Vital Weekly (NL)

Taylor Deupree becomes more and more a man of minimalism. On his latest CD Stil. (he has a fixation with periods…) he contiues were he left with Occur but now in a more rhythmical context and thus becomes the opposite of Occur. Deupree works with a relatively simple set of sounds, looped of course in this case, which move in and out of phase, and can easily be compared with Steve Reich’s phase shifting techniques. It works well in the first three pieces of this CD, but unfortunally the longest piece of the CD – “Stil.” is the weakest brother here. It all becomes a bit of blurr and some of the tension of the other pieces is entirely gone here. Which is a pity because in the other three pieces things worked out well. These pieces have a lot of tension and fragile beauty. Things move with not much speed, but they move around majestically. It’s almost a new definition of ambient music, with lush textures but also with sound material borrowed from Clicks and Cuts. It’s a pity that the last track sort of ruins it for the CD. It could have been a great CD, now it’s sort of alright. (FdW)