With a career spanning 8 years and 14 releases, Anne Sulikowski (A.K.A Building Castles Out Of Mathcsticks) has never deterred from her trademark ‘angel wing’ minimalism. Her latest offering isn’t an exception.
‘Secret Land’’ presents all the customary sound traits of the Ambient masters wrapped in the distinctive atmosphere that highlights Canadian born Sulikowski’s previous output. Synth-pop and crackled blips provide ethereal release, and give the effect of gravity-defying detachment, but only if displayed in the correct manner. She attempts to construct a dreamlike soundscape for her sparse, pneumatic vochals to glide like gossamer but falls at the first hurdle. All electronic genre’s are flooded and uniqueness is key. This maple-leaf gal has merely pulled the limbs off Brian Eno’s ‘Ambient 1: Music For Airports,’’ and replaced them with the mannequin arms and legs of Richard D James and Tom Jenkinson. With this blended hybrid, her work gives the effect of mind-numbing reverie but never quite reaches that status.
Having said this, taken as quaint and breezy ‘Pillow Pop’’ she has achieved a customary slant on this recently established genre (established by me…6 seconds prior to writing this sentence). It’s Ambient-lite. So light infact, as to become transparent. For all the poetic verve ‘Building Castles Out Of Matchsticks,’’ (A.K.A Anne-meister)’s 15th release elicits, her fractured dreamlike breeziness is hypnagogic…but for all the wrong reasons. It’s electronic music that has been smeared in grey matter and smothered by 1000 imitators. Still, she can ride a moose like a manic mountaineer.