Boomkat:

Acre Loss was conceived as an audiovisual collaboration between musician Mark Templeton and filmmaker Aaron Munson, culminating in 10 musical compositions to be accompanied by 10 short films. The two artists worked together at every stage in the project, which perhaps goes someway towards accounting for the eerily tangible sense of location and scene-setting in these electro-acoustic passages. This music is cinematic in the strictest sense; its environmental sounds and illustrative, foley-like constituent elements are suggestive of scenarios and images, lending an extra dimension to the musical narratives themselves. 'aTest' sounds like Grouper in a hail storm - a beautiful and surreal experience to get the album underway. Elements of field recordings, subtly filtered electronic elements and heavily cloaked vocals are key to the overall sound here, and this strange blend is delivered to mesmerising effect on more robustly constructed pieces like 'This Will Pass'. Short-form audio postcards 'Small One' and 'Too Small' draw influence on the guitar dislocations of Christian Fennesz, proving to be every bit as effective as the longer constructions like the ten-minute closer 'Looking Northward', which itself sounds like a daydreamed tribute to the verdant soundscapes of Mountains, or Tape. Excellent.

January 2009