Brock Van Wey

As Bvdub, San Franciscan Brock Van Wey has generated a swelling fog of limited edition releases, including those on his Quietus imprint. Those efforts, combining Wolfgang Voigt's minimalist haze with a dub version of basic Basic Channel beats, soon caught Stephen Hitchell's ear. The Echospace honcho not only released BVW's first birth name release but also contributed an extra disc of remixes under his (Hitchell's) Intrusion alias. On White Clouds, Van Wey strips away the beats and allows the evolution of elements, like muted acoustic bass, captured voices and hyper-extended strings, to determine velocity and direction. The echoing tribe vocals, especially on "I Knew Happiness Once," recall Graeme Revell's soundtrack work on Until the End of the World. The "Intrusion shape" disc takes all six tracks and swallows them into the belly of the Echospace craft, emitting them as distant liquid pulsars. It's a two-for-one deal that no fan of ambient electronics should be without.