Audio By Carbonatix
Kelly David is one of Colorado’s most unusual recording artists — a lawyer and sometime radio DJ who also happens to be a skilled producer of electronic/ambient music. While his latest recording may not be as immediately striking as his 2002 masterwork, Broken Voyage, it’s (moderately) more accessible and eventually reveals itself to be almost as beautifully creepy as its predecessor.
The concept this time around is an aural exploration of the title city, which served as the capital of the Southeast Asian Khmer empire for more than half a millennium beginning around the ninth century A.D. Yet this seven-track-long journey — which, like Voyage, was made with the assistance of electro-cult figure Steve Roach — is more than a mere travelogue. “Outside the Temperate Zone” represents a dark, droning plunge into the eternal, whereas “Echoes of Angkor” uses staccato synthetics and eerie washes to conjure the sensation of a past world brought back to ghostly life.
What a trip.
