REVIEWS

Buy this album from iTunes

Life Toward Twilight
An Eclipse

Bottle Imp Productions

Posted: Thursday, December 11, 2008
By: Matthew Johnson
Features Editor

Life Toward Twilight's Daniel Tuttle originally released An Eclipse five years ago in a limited edition of 25 copies; he's released quite a lot of material since then, but this material still holds up quite well and is sure to please current fans of this rising star of the dark ambient scene. Consisting of three tracks and clocking in at just over 17 minutes, it's not a terribly immersive work due to its brevity, but uses what little time it has effectively to evoke a sense of eerie melancholic meditation. "Eclipse I" is the longest of the three tracks and also the slowest to progress, with long, low soft drones joined by metallic creaking that creates a sense of foreboding without having to go for shock value; eventually, chiming minor-key piano plinks create a more melodic counterpoint to the abrasive scrapes. The CD's centerpiece, "Eclipse II" is its loveliest and most memorable offering, thanks in large part to haunting, wordless guest vocals from regular Life Toward Twilight collaborator Elyse Reardon. Her ghostly operatic voice floats out of the thickly distorted ambient tones like fog over a graveyard, rendering the background noise all the more chilling and powerful. It's a marvelous contrast, the audio equivalent of a monstrous sculpture created from mismatched Victorian doll parts. "Eclipse III" finishes things up by deliberately dialing down the emotional resonance with a muffled classical loop that seems to be played on faulty equipment at the wrong speed. With its undercurrent of grandiosity buried beneath white noise, it's a little like Boyd Rice's early vinyl record experiments. Overall, An Eclipse isn't quite a masterpiece like Tuttle's later I Swear by All the Flowers, and newcomers to his work would be best served by starting off with either that album or the collection, We Waited for a Subtle Dawn, which includes this release's best track. On the other hand, people who've already become enamored with Life Toward Twilight's particular brand of instrumental melancholia will find this a worthy addition to their collections.