Pendere (2007) — Robert Scott Thompson — Electronic Music
Nine of the 16 tracks were first released on several of RST’s earlier albums (‘Air Friction,’ ‘Deeper in the Dreamtime,’ ‘Ginnungagap,’ and ‘Aether’) yet this is far from being a ‘Best of Robert Scott Thompson’ compilation album; it has its own very definite “feel.”
It starts out with a very fast piece called ‘Needles,’ which features a pulsing sixteenth-note electronic beat (which at times is verging on modern Electronica, such as in the piece ‘Game Free’), and also has pieces such as ‘StarShimmer,’ which is almost (I nearly hesitate to use the term) like an instrumental pop song, with a “New Age” orientation.
This collection may not appeal uniformly to all fans of RST’s other work (such as his more purely Ambient, or his classically-styled Electro-Acoustic pieces), but it is an excellent work, whose appeal will likely range beyond some of his more “typical” albums.
Pendere covers a large range of creative output from the composer Robert Scott Thompson. Not intended to be a “greatest hits” package – the tracks appearing on Pendere represent both new material and old. For anyone new to Thompson’s work this would be a good start – but there is much that would be missed if the listener stopped here. Robert Scott Thompson has been heralded as ‘one of the most criminally overlooked composers in the Ambient genre today.’
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