As far as I remember this is the first major work by Jorge Mantas, who has published works on CDR before as well as being part of a previous release on Cronica Electronica. Among his influences he ranks rather writers (such as Proust, Poe, Dante), painters (Friedrich, Waterhouse), nouvelle vague cinema and erotic photography. I was playing this CD and couldn’t help thinking: I heard this before. Ambient scape drone music. Made with a laptop. Based on field recordings and instruments. How easy do you want to have it? Yet I was playing this a couple of times and every time I thought: wow this is nice. The guiding theme here are ‘romantic drones’. Violins are sampled, layered, looped around, and sound like a warm bed, candle lit, incense perhaps (don’t know how romantic things should be) and in the background the ambient glitch muzak of The Beautiful Schizophonic. The music is a bit like sweet cake. You take a bite and think that it’s nice, and even the second and third bite are great but then your teeth start hurting of all the sweetness. That is a bit the trap of this album. It’s a sweet album, a great album, but perhaps to be taken in just a few bites every time. (FdW)