Album Notes

With the secret code of CLLPSS, Stephen Bishop allows the listener entry into two cavernous, wonderfully micro-detailed compositions. But this is more than sound for sound\'s sake.

Bishop has forged for us a fully realized world that induces stunning visuals throughout the listening experience: uncoiling snakes, blazing sun and vast expanses of desert, cities of metal tumbling into a cold and bloodless ocean.

The opener \"Orch\" is particularly stirring and full of depth charged plangent energies--slowly unfolding rattles, creaks, whispersm and hissing circuitry slowly are revealed atop an endless and alluring drone-siren. \"Saphrealia (Or Ladders)\" is more charged: a hypnotic roller coaster of moods forged in a sphere of splintered caterwaul, ghostly voices, and fractured metallic timbres.

Both works create endless possibilities for exploration as Bishop expertly employs numerous sound sources he creates with an array of strange \"instruments\" (both intentionally musical or otherwise).

The result is a refreshingly active and surprisingly subtle approach to sound. Through a careful layering and shifting of textures the audience, like an explorer lost in a strange and bloodless sea, is immersed in a haunting and ultimately boundless listening space.