The fourth album by Sjaak Overgaauw, also know as Premonition Factory. He’s Dutch man living in Antwerpen, playing guitar and electronics. The CD cover has some pretentious wording, such as “nothing is the absence of something/sometimes a synonym for silence/the period before you start playing/after you played the last note. You start from nothing/less is more/the magic will come, eventually/record it, and release it/. Send your music into the world/the magic must be heard/otherwise it might end as nothing/in theory”. Now, I have no idea why he put that on the cover. Sorry. Maybe that explains why I have a problem with the title too. It’s all a bit too much. According to the press release however this new album is ‘both like the closing of a chapter and the beginning of something new’ and we are urged to play this loud. Which is not my idea of this kind of mood music, which I like to have on relatively soft – well, it’s hard to explain I guess. How soft or loud one plays music is very personal. I must admit I don’t hear a new direction in these six new pieces. Overgaauw uses the book of ambient like he’s always done, taking Vidna Obmana, Brian Eno and Robert Fripp as his prime sources. Long sustaining sounds, in which we no longer recognize the guitar or the bass, which he apparently uses (but we never see in the pictures), and once again Overgaauw delivers an excellent album of first class ambient music. There is nothing new under the sun here, but that’s alright. Ambient music is just a very well defined field, and as such nothing new should happen. Fans know what to look for and Premonition Factory deliver high quality music. (FdW)

Source: Vital Weekly