Solar Refraction
Blinded By White
The 88th Parallel
Inner Dark Companion
Third Pole

Our personal preferences are what marks us out as individuals. Your drug of choice may be Hash or Coke or even Skag. Mine is Rohypnol. It cuts out all that boring dating crap. No more going for meals or the theatre or being forced to listen to their shitty music or meeting the poxy parents. A couple of drops or tablets and its ‘wham bam thank you mam’. Never to be seen again. Unless of course you get caught. They should issue it on the National Health. It sure worked wonders for my sex life. So it is with music.

My musical taste is deeply individual and what I may consider to be a work of utter genius will be dismissed by others as the idiotic ramblings of a fool. Well I’m no Forrest Gump, so best you take me at my word when I categorically state that "Third Pole" by Project Arctic will be regarded as a classic in the dark ambient genre in years to come. You read it here first. When you take members of Empusae and This Morn’Omina (if these names mean nothing to you then you’re a fucking ostrich) and put them to work together this is the end result. Appropriately enough this CD arrived as the Winter nights were closing in and the temperature dropped to below freezing setting the scene for the desolate soundscapes that Project Arctic have produced. As can be gathered from the title "Third Pole", the music is a journey into the icy fields of the great outdoors where isolation reigns supreme and survival is only for the fittest. The blasts of howling winds sweep across a barren landscape framed by the clearest of blue skies and patches of frozen water. A storm suddenly erupts and the blizzard of snow blinds and burns anyone caught in its path. A voice is spoken. Submerged and strangled it cries out from the dark beyond. What is imaginary and reality merges into one. The darkness prevails yet lets in small glimmers of light and hope. Or is it a false dawn. Thus the music records this place in time. Never has being so cold been so warm. A contradiction so apt in every way.

"Third Pole" ranks up there with the best in atmospheric ambient music. A masterpiece of understated electronics that needs to be heard to be fully appreciated.

ANM