Ben Fleury-Steiner, Soeng (Earsnake)

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On Soeng, Ben Fleury-Steiner - prolific American collaborator, head of his own cutting-edge CDR label - crafts some very sophisticated pieces with little post-production, beginning with "Tendrils", the first of several tracks centred around the electric kalimba, an instrument I had no idea existed.

Essentially an electronically-enhanced African thumb piano, it appears to be the invention of firebrand David Bellinger. Seemingly improvised upon, this electric kalimba has enough organic resonance to still sound "woody" and with the exotic and humid ambience Fleury-Steiner creates around it, mostly with "found sounds", it evokes imaginary or real southeast Asian jungle surroundings, gibbons hopping around the canopy overhead. For indeed, "soeng" is Korean for "nature".

Even the voices hiding deep in the background express an exoticism, a found and very attractive foreign language. As the album progresses, the soundtrack incorporates more and more loop, tape reversal and reverb and becomes more abstract and enticing, until it finally takes something of a more recognizabe shape, rounded off nicely with "Sunnudagar", to which husband-and-wife duo Northern Valentine have added airy keyboard and guitar.

Creating rarefied and unique aural environments is the main brief of experimental ambient music, though so few actually really succeed. Fleury-Steiner certainly has here - I´ve never heard any place like it before. Very accomplished, very layered. Rewards repeated, and deeper, listenings.

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