1. Nature Of Illusion (Part 1) [MP3]
2. Nature Of Illusion (Part 2) [MP3]
3. Sun with a Beating Heart (Part 1)
4. Sun with a Beating Heart (Part 2)

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April 19, 2013
NL MP3 self-released on Bandcamp

1. The Silverman – Part One 22:46
2. Part Two 21:50

Credits

• The Silver Man (Phil Knight)- keys devices
• Edward Ka-Spel- vocal acrobatics

Notes

Recorded and mixed at Studio Lent, April to June 2005.
The first 700 copies of Nature Of Illusion CD and the first 200 copies of the Nature Of Illusion LP came with the Woodland Calling CD.
The MT 096c LP is an edition limited to 15 copies in a wooden box with the Woodland Calling CD and Sun with a Beating Heart.

2013 Bandcamp release:
The Silverman in existential mode.
Two lengthy pieces -one a reflective keyboard study, the other one striding boldly to “the other side”. Watch out Aldous…..

Press Release

One of the truest indications of a good record is when it sounds like something is starting to go wrong with the car while listening to it. The latest Silverman sounds at turns like the breaks are going, the belts are slipping, the timing needs adjusting, the drive shaft has a shot bearing and the clutch is failing. Perhaps this is the very nature of illusion bespoke in the title. NOI is a much more amorphous excursion than some of Silverman’s previous slow trance explorations, though it does display his trademark fondness for going to very quiet places. Through a polar silence comes a ringing metallic that fades off into contrapuntal, subsonic drones. A brief essay of percussives trails back into the liquid void. The album is a series of such interlocked and subtle sonic, largely non-melodic shape shifts whose darkness is not so much morose as it is simply casting shadows of and off the unknown. Silverman has carved an abstract chasm of distant, organic electronics that is best first opened away from one’s car. – BLRR

ReviewsThe Silverman is Legendary Pink Dots keyboardist Phil Knight. Joining him on this record is the equally legendary Pink Dots front man Edward Ka-Spel.

Nature of the Illusion is what I think of as the best kind of ambient music. Dark, swirling, and complex…it’s as Eno defined it so many years ago: music that could just as easily be background music as it could be foreground music. Nature of the Illusion is interesting to listen to, if you should choose to do so, but works equally well floating in the background, barely heard, perhaps only by the subconscious.

The album consists of two lengthy tracks, each in the 20+ minute range. The first, Nature of Illusion Part 1 begins with complex, brooding, ever-shifting and changing atmospherics. Out of it emerges a strange rhythmic structure as much created by The Silverman’s percussive sounds as it is by Ka-Spel’s chant like vocals, as it all floats along on dark, yet shimmering metallic waves, like a spectral and otherworldly ocean. Nature of Illusion Part 2 introduces slightly harsher drones, softened however by gentle melodic organ, taking the listener on a slowly relaxing voyage of intriguing sounds, in opposition to each other, yet still managing to work together.

The first 700 copies of the CD also contain a bonus disc, which contains over an hour’s worth of music in the form of one lengthy track entitled Woodland Calling. This one falls more into the kind of ambient music that is strictly background. A glistening oscillation that sounds something like a glass harmonica combined with a distant and primal horn drifts back and forth in minimalist fashion, changing ever so subtly and slowly as the piece evolves at a glacial pace. While it’s difficult to just sit and listen to this whole piece (outside of, perhaps, the context of meditation), it does make for a unique kind of sonic environment, gently floating in the surroundings, with just enough edginess to elevate it above similar kinds of music that would more readily fall into the new age category.

I don’t know if all the copies with the bonus disc have sold out yet (you’d have to contact Beta-Lactum Records to find that out), but this album is nonetheless worth getting even without the second disc, as the Nature of Illusion tracks present some truly fine ambient music to tantalize your ears and your mind. –Jeff Fitzgerald, aural-innovations.com