Genre: Drone / Dark Ambient

Tracklist:

01 Bicep
02 Further Out In Time
03 Living In The Night
04 Still Constant Edit

 
Thomas Park describes his project, Mystified, as “very diverse, [having] spanned musics such as ambient, industrial, phonography, drone, and noise, among others.” Honestly, I didn't quite know what to expect from this description. It could've been a ambient, industrial release with a little drone doom influence, or it could have been a slow paced noise album. For all I knew, Mystified's sound could have been anywhere between the cited genres. It turns out it was a rather nice mix.

The first track, “Bicep”, is a rather decent piece of droning. It consists pretty much of one note stretched all along the five minutes of its length, but the noises and ambiances surrounding that note make this track quite enjoyable. The atmosphere is clearly settled in the breath of the eerie soundscapes of Thomas Park's Missouri-based project; a project which, although active since only four years, already has an extensive amount of records released, averaging at more than 25 releases per year, not counting remixes and appearances on compilations.

One of the strengths of D-Program is that, from one central note, Thomas Park is able to form a beautiful, dark soundscape, capturing your soul in the essence of the music. With very little unpleasant noises, the composer manipulates the sound in a manner which enables some form or another of time distortion in the mind of the listener, isolating us in a still picture, a lone and immobile painting, where the only thing we can do is wait, and become ourselves part of the landscape. This strength, however, can also be seen as a weakness in Mystified's album. By keeping a steady and unchanging note, Thomas Park makes the four tracks off D-Program cause some sort of ennui if listened to repeatedly. The complete lack of tonal variation is source for a certain lassitude that listeners may acquire after having listened to the album on a regular basis. But, in my opinion, this is proof that Mystified's music is just that good. Listeners want more, and this is exactly what Park has in mind.

D-Program is a short release, and listening to it is like taking a tour on a small island isolated in the middle of a faraway ocean. However, that tour is worth the go, and unless you do not appreciate ambient or dronescape music, you will not be disappointed in Thomas Park's approach to sound, not only as a set of vibrations reaching your eardrums, but as a presence, one that stares at you from within and leads you step by step on a path to the unknown.