Album Notes

"Vast" offers a melodic yet droning soundscape that sets the pace for a journey forth into the vastness of space. This 66-plus minute work explores and strives to suggest and describe surprises, twists and turns both within and outside the womb of reality, and eventual eternal resolve.

REVIEW from New Age reviewer Pyracantha:

"Vast" begins as a spacemusic album, rather melancholy in mood with a touch of "Gothic" added by ambient vocalist "The Tunnel Singer (Lee Ellen Shoemaker)" in track 2, "Blessing." True to classic space-ambient form, Plummer's music consists of slow smooth chord changes, layered with long synthesizer notes and lots of reverb. He works in both major and minor conventional keys, without too much reliance on the overworked modal/pentatonic sound of Euro-American ambient. For instance, Track 3, "Sunspots," is in a quiet and "sunny" major key.

But by Track 4, "Spatial Curve," Plummer's album starts turning into something a bit darker and more ominous. Track 5, "They Await," drops you right out of luminous space into a horrific world of ancient, inhuman intelligences from some black frozen abyss. He uses an effective combination of a deep dark repeating four-note figure topped with knife-thin metallic atonal notes.

The next track, "Angel of Forgiveness," moves in a slow funereal orbit, while the piece after that, track 7 "Outside the Womb of Reality," places the listener in a nearly toneless, chilling world of technological drones, while in the distance what might be a persistent alarm bell warns of some unseen emergency. But the composer is merciful, and in the last track, "Embracing Infinity," he returns the listener to the world of rationality and hope, as his slow-moving, icy sound-clouds part to reveal the sunlight of a major chord.

Gregg Plummer's VAST, while remaining within the "tradition" of synthesizer ambient, conveys plenty of emotion and could easily be the soundtrack to a science fiction or space film. The music is purposeful and despite its slowness, it is concentrated enough to encourage imagination and visualization rather than putting you to sleep. Forces of both light and darkness can co-exist in this "Vast" universe.