Reviews for Purlieu

The Wire
Taking its title from the term for a stretch of land bordering the edge of a royal forest, Ross Baker's latest release shows the same conceptual boldness as his Rooftops project in which he recorded six different version of his favourite song. A 16 page booklet, containing overcast rural images of hedgerows and churches plus an existentially displaced first person narrative, accompanies this cycle of wistful instrumental sketches. Evoking the moist contours of a desolate nonexistent terrain, Purlieu does a thorough job of pacing out its boundaries and limitations. Birds sing, thunder rumbles and Baker's keyboards chime pleasantly in the distance, recalling memories of a time when all of this was just fields.


Igloo Magazine
If time and space weren't enough to consume in a philosophical inquiry, it's easy to note that Ross Baker (a.k.a. Second Thought) not only envisions those primary aspects of life but also reaches through finite depths of atmospheric bewilderment in his music. Being inside the landscapes featured in this sixteen page full-color booklet of Purlieu is just the beginning.
Purlieu might have been released about a year ago, but it will certainly take even more time to unravel its hidden mysteries buried within the contents of electrically sculptured, microscopic sound. With whimsical appeal, Second Thought opts for riveting ambient fluctuations as he unfolds layers upon layers of magnetic ambiences in about an hours worth of delicately weaving frequencies. As suggested by the liner notes, the intentions of Purlieu were to make the listener feel lost and confused in a strange, cold and desolate countryside --a statement that holds true from start to end, no doubt. As if imagined in a distant dream, the contents of Purlieu conjures the soundscapes of a flourishing green world, church bells ringing in the background, crumbling leaves scattered on a dirt path, twigs brushing against the wind, fog drifting between the hillsides, overcast skies blanketing an open field and multiple spheres of organic shuffling --these are only some of the images that become vivid documents during the listening experience on this surreal disc by Second Thought.
Welcome to a place that does not exist --a place that can only really exist if you allow the subtlety of every sound to cultivate and infectiously trickle into your imagination. Purlieu would fit comfortably with (early) Future Sound of London, Tear Ceremony and Roderick Julian Modell quite easily. Inspiring to say the least.


Splendid Ezine
Second Thought's electronica is of a rhythm-free room-filling other-place-evoking vaguely spooky sorta-menacing-around-the-edges variety. Purlieu's dominant modes include slow progressions of various tones, periodically rent by grindings, birdsongs, recognizable instrumentation (a piano breaks through at the oddest times), weather, and other sounds too numerous to categorize. But there are a lot of these albums. Assuming that your record collection includes one or two other discs that bear some thematic similarity to this one, should you go ahead and pick up Purlieu as well? Yes. This is perhaps the most intriguing album of its vaguely defined type that I've heard since Tyondai Braxton's History That Has No Effect. While this disc certainly doesn't have that album's almost revolutionary aliveness and intriguingly improvisatory nature, the ways in which Second Thought's auteur combines, reimagines, and constantly innovates with his self-limited palette of sounds means that he is in Braxton's league: this vocal-less album is easily identifiable as the work of a singular and distinct artistic intellect. Purlieu's effect is not dependent on individual sounds or themes broken down to the level of single tracks. It's the sort of album you should listen to in one long session. After a few such sessions, the sonic vistas and subtle variations form a world that is always a pleasure to visit.


Aiding & Abetting
It's a little strange that a record label is named after an act, but when Second Thought the band is Ross Baker and Second Thought the label is run by the same Ross Baker, well, I suppose you're entitled. Even stranger though is that Baker used to record under his own name before adopting the Second Thought moniker back around 2000. Anything might seem strange, however, until you hear the music. Then reality takes its leave completely. I've always used the term "soundscape" to indicate that than artist has created his or her or its own rules and then made music that fits those rules rather than the humdrum Newtonian physics and Einsteinian special relativity under which we exist. Baker changes the rules on just about every piece, lending to an intensifying sense of unease as the electronic journey of this album rumbles on. This stuff is experimental, but each piece does adhere to one or two central tenets. Taken individually, each makes sense in some warped way. Taken as a whole, I'm not sure what to make of it. And that's cool. A sense of mystery is always appreciated in these here parts. Often enthralling and always intriguing, Purlieu ducks its head into some of the darker corners of modern electronic music. Baker refuses to stick to any particular style or feel, and that impresses me all the more. Quite the ride.

<< Press