Tom Heasley

Ambient tuba player and composer, Tom Heasley's album, Where The Earth Meets The Sky, is rich and varied in texture, comprised of four tracks, each roughly 15 minutes long. For those familiar with the music of Steve Roach, or any of the ambient compilation material on the Mirage label, such as The Ambient Eclipse, Where the Earth... is in a similar vein. Long sustained tuba notes are looped and processed to provide a broad canvas while sharper more defined notes are played over top along with vocals that Heasley dubs "throat singing." The music is suggestive of an eerie, vast, iridescent lunar landscape caught in perpetual twilight, with the singing perhaps adding an extraterrestrial dimension to it. It appears as if Heasley has an entire orchestra at his disposal, but his set-up of tuba, loops and processing devices with vocals is quite simple. This album proves you don't need an army of synths to create a lush and full sounding album.