Thom Brennan’s Beneath Clouds takes the listener a little bit further into the deep and resonantly cavernous ambiences that he explored on his Mountains recording. There’s still a bit of sequenced rhythm hiding on just the other side of the sonic tapestry, but for the most part rhythm is absent, and it’s as if the pulse of the recording is merely looming in the background. With Thom Brennan’s Beneath Clouds, as has been the case with a lot of Thom Brennan’s work, there’s quite a bit of a Steve Roach influence. Perhaps it’s because they are friends, or maybe they just use the same equipment, synthesizers, sequencers, and the like. Whatever it is, though, that keeps Thom Brennan creating these excellently evocative ambiences, let’s hope that he keeps his formula, because it’s as if listeners are getting some of the lost tracks from Timeroom, Steve Roach’s studio, with every disc that Thom Brennan puts out. At the same time Thom Brennan’s work is quite different and it doesn’t have that glossy feel that much of the work that Steve Roach puts out has. This is a good thing, because the glossiness that his recordings have is sometimes too much, and one longs for the sound that he had on his early recordings and his Fortuna releases, which lacked that glossy feeling. Thom Brennan’s Beneath Clouds takes listeners back to this time in sound and feeling. This is a great work and one that is highly recommended. – Matt Borghi