Anduin

Back in May, Jonathan Lee (Anduin) collaborated with Dag Rosenqvist (Jasper, TX) on Bending of Light, an album that looked skywards and beyond for contrasts of brightness and dark. Abandoned in Sleep now turns very much inwards, where the shifts slide between dark and darker. It's also a bit of a jigsaw, as Lee constructs the tracks from a variety of collaborations, samples and live performances by, and with, fellow sound scientists like Stefan Németh (Radian), John Twells (Xela) and Erik Skodvin (Svarte Greiner). The flicking of lighters, feet through leaves and a variety of skittering across surfaces advertise a physical presence wandering through these dream states. The musical instruments act almost as beacons, like the warning tone of oboe beneath "Autumn Looming," the Morse code of plucked strings on "Octogonal Forms" and the foghorn of harmonica on "A Light in the Darkness." All are draped with an enveloping tone of ennui that nicely embodies the distress of waking suddenly from a dream.