Genre: Dark Ambient/Drone

01 The Line That Divides The Earth From The Sky
02 Rise Of The Native
03 The Victim
04 When The Patient Stars Breathe

The CD is coming in a nice digipack box together with small additions which are usually not necessary but always pleasant to get - a stylish card-reminder with all the addresses connected with the band and a letter which gives you a feeling of contact between listener and the artists. Redux is the third CD of Formication band and was originally ment to be an EP and contain reworked material, but eventually it turned into a full-length album, taking 49 minutes of one's life.

The atmosphere of the songs is very different. Certainly. Those tracks come from different sessions - The Victim and When the Patient Stars Breathe fell out of the "Pieces from a Condemned Piano", "Rise of the Native" and "The Line that Divides..." is a track from "Crossing the Sea by Radio" times. But nevertheless at the same time being close to ambient areas this album remains non-monotonous and provides the change of mood from track to track. Actually the release is somewhere on the edge between dark ambient and rhythmic electonic music. You can get familiar with the story of each track with the help of information on the box.

"The Line that Divides the Earth from Sky" is opening the album and invites you to..underwater world. I had exactly this feeling - very thick atmosphere, not transparent as if it was the air. It is rather the depth where it is difficult to recognise the sound - it comes unclear and goes away. The surrounding is quite stable - the track has a clear rhythm, the pattern that is repeated over and over. If it is able to call it dark in the very beginning, then closer to the end with the help of some sounds the atmosphere becomes clearer and lighter.

"Rise of The Native", vice versa, becomes gloomy closer to the end. Compared with the first track it is rather cosmic and gives you the feeling of sound in a huge space, that appears from nowhere and slowly approaches you. It turns into the mix of different clicks and noises each having its own line to follow, filling this space as small inhabitants. Those can be compared with different colours that fill the black canvas or many little star clusters that fill the cosmic space.

"The Victim" is the darkest track on this release in my opinion (which is not achieved with the help of electonic distorted sounds, but with real ones). And the most bright one at the same moment. If I had to compare the mood of this track, I would compare it with a black/satanic ambient project Aghast. Having a clear rhythm The Victim stays quite ambient, it makes you fall into the trance - rhythmic percussion and voices repeating the same speech sample, which is difficult to identify, sometimes followed by strange sounds some of which remind me shots. In a progress dark synth passages are added one by one and with much reverberation it all reminds me underground cells with imprisoned spirits that are searching the way out or some witches' sabbath. Really great track in my opinion, would like to hear more of that kind. It keeps your ears listening till the last minute.

"When the Patient Stars Breathe" really suits its name. During the 15 minutes you get 3 interconnected tracks. Transparent, cosmic beginning. Pulsing electro rhythm of the second part gave me an impression of heart-beat, accompanied by synth passages and distorted lines that remind breathing. The third part is also electro rhythm based, but has a softer sound and a stronger accent on synth passages that embrace your listening ability. Closer to the end the sound becomes thicker and thicker until the moment when rhythm goes far in the background and synth background with horn and voice (?) comes in front to introduce the real size of the space that was filled with sounds some minutes ago and slowly fades away.