Scene and Heard – CCXCV : Land of Clouds  – Yaman Palak (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Land of Clouds is one of those songs that underlines the power of the digital music revolution. There was a time when synthesisers and samples, music created from non-analogue sources, sounds drawn from the ether rather than for physical dexterity of the player was viewed with suspicion, especially by guitar wielding, narrow-minded, nostalgia freaks. But that was their loss because the studio itself has become an instrument in its own right, one limited only by the imagination of the creator rather than the sonic limitations of the instrument at hand.

Thus we have artists such as Yaman Palak making songs which are wonderfully emotive, seem to be built as much on mood and atmosphere as much as they are on beat and lyric, songs which seem to encompass a strange blend of primal force and futuristic sound. The past and the present existing in one space. Land of Clouds is a mercurial blend of technology and soul, of ambient soundscaping and skittering, slow dance grooves, a glimpse of the future via sounds which resonate with familiarity. Music isn’t always about revolution, that rarely works, but evolution, that is much more effective.